


the lies we are told (& believe)

by ohmaggies



Series: to bear this single ghost everywhere [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Heavy Angst, Major Original Character(s), Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Self-Reflection, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:54:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24927988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmaggies/pseuds/ohmaggies
Summary: "My husband's missing," the man repeats, knowing he's hit a soft spot.Yvonne looks up, and knows with every two hundred year old ache in her body that she'll regret this. "Where did you last see him?".Not a month after the Institute was destroyed, Yvonne finds herself pulled back exactly where she doesn't want to be; tangled yet again with the Railroad and chasing a missing person through the Commonwealth.She learns the hard way not everyone is adjusting to life without the Institute, and this war is far from over.
Relationships: Female Sole Survivor/Male Sole Survivor
Series: to bear this single ghost everywhere [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1804897
Kudos: 6





	1. the lies we tell ourselves

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't written fic in about a year and a half but i've been playing fo4 for roughly eight months and completely fell in love with the story and the characters, and couldn't not write something for it. 
> 
> all typos are (unfortunately) mine, though there hopefully aren't m/any. thanks in advance for reading!!

She counts five fingers on her right hand and five fingers on her left hand.

She's not dreaming.

The Institute is nothing but smoke and rubble, permeating the air with dust that had over two hundred years to settle in the remains of the CIT building. Yvonne remembers seeing it on the news sometime when she was young, when it was clean and beautiful, and not the wreckage she's reduced it to; it's gone, like the son she left to die, the walls caving in on him a burial in its own way.

Preston's face says it all, she thinks. As does his hand, gloved but warm against her shaking fingers, not enough to stop the ferocious tremors of her grief wrecked body. She's seen enough blood for a lifetime, only challenged perhaps by her veteran husband, who would need shaking awake most nights when the ghosts of war haunted his sleep. Ghosts she didn't think would find her until she'd find herself unable to sleep, keeping busy to avoid shadows she could tell were chasing her.

"Hell of an explosion," someone at her back whispers, Preston's fingers briefly flexing in his glove. "People'll be seeing that for miles, General."

Various voices break the silence in agreement, Sturges and Preston not joining in.

She closes her eyes and only sees the flames of a time before this, smoke and destruction barreling towards her on that elevator, the breeze pushing through her hair barely a whisper compared to the gushing air that had flown above her on her way down into the vault. To safety. All those people… their skeletons scattering the ground on her way out, the same way this explosion will leave hundreds buried underground, including Shaun.

It just hurts - this unexplainable ache where her heart should be, suspended in her chest but instead so empty yet heavy that it collapses her legs out beneath her. Preston catches her, various junk from her pockets spilling to the ground, and Sturges moves forward to help steady her back up against the railing. Each touch she wishes were Nate, and she sees his face in each face here and knows he would've made the same choices she did. If he had heard Shaun's voice, saying the murder in Vault 111 was nothing more than _collateral damage._

She's burned part of the world down for him, her Nate. Even now, Kellogg's pistol sits in her pocket, unused for the months since Kellogg himself tried to use it to kill her the same way he used it to kill Nate. 

It's a reminder, no matter the kind of person she was and is, she'll always be Yvonne, none of the fancy titles she's found herself wearing. Just Yvonne, who fell in love with a boy named Nate when he offered to walk her home one evening; he told the story at their wedding, the way he'd stumbled back through the party to tell his friends he met the woman he was going to marry. Even then, she would've died for him.

Now, her hands grip the railing, blurred eyes bearing witness to the reality of what she's done.

In this new world that was once ushered in by nuclear devastation, she has many names. Wanderer, General, Knight… Names she never wanted, or meant for herself. She only wants Yvonne, wife, _mother_. At her core, that's what she is; a wife without a husband, a mother without a son. 

Yvonne, _widow_ . Yvonne, _childless_. Names more accurate than General and Knight, and Travis Miles' nervous tripping over his own words as he calls her the vault dweller. If she had truly been a vault dweller, like the people in Vault 81, maybe - maybe she would've had her chance two hundreds years before this, to be the wife and mother she wanted to be. But her husband is dead and her son is dead, and her knuckles pale with their tight grip on the railing.

"General," Preston says. Preston, who has her back even when she doesn't deserve it. Preston, who almost lost his hope in himself and the Minutemen. _Preston_. "You need help getting home, ma'am?"

"I need some time," Yvonne manages, voice steady despite her sorrowful gaze on the wreckage in the distance. "You and Sturges head back to Sanctuary without me, you won't even notice I'm gone. Promise."

Preston smiles at her, barely, and rests his hand on her shoulder for a brief moment before retreating with Sturges in tow. The other Minutemen scatter, leaving her to claw at the helmet she keeps on her head to free her face and feel the wind fondling her hair, a small reminder of her beating heart and working lungs. The sun is warm against her skin, so warm she's bitterly surprised when it doesn't sizzle the tears straight off her cheeks as they spill from tightly held closed eyes. 

She's spent so long cooped up in armour that she isn't entirely sure she'd recognise her own face if she saw it. It'd feel like nothing more than a parody of her - its unrecognisable tired eyes, graying hair and downturned lips; a mockery of the woman she once was, her body covered in steel protection with a military suit underneath and a ram-like helmet hiding her face. 

Hubris Comics, that's where she got the helmet. The helmet and the Silver Shroud outfit that has earned a permanent place in her inventory despite how heavy it can be to drag around.

One Halloween when they were younger, she and Nate, newly engaged, had dressed up as the Silver Shroud and the Mistress of Mystery for a party with his military friends. She can so easily recall her in his lap in their car, parked on the side of the road as he pressed desperate kisses to the delicate patch of skin on her neck that he knew drove her crazy, her fingers digging into his shoulders. 

Those nights before he was meant to leave to fight a war she didn't want him to fight, his practiced impression of the Silver Shroud as the radio played the latest episode, and her hysterical laughter as she accused him of practicing the voice in his spare time. They didn't sleep those nights, nor did she sleep when he was gone and she would listen to the Shroud herself, arms hugged around herself trying not to imagine her new husband dead on a battlefield somewhere. 

Now, she knows that's what he deserved. Dying in the heat of battle, brave and a hero, not shot by a man like Kellogg in an unfamiliar vault underground after Yvonne and Nate watched their world reduce to nothing.

He should've died a hero, not nothing more than _collateral damage_ to his own grown-up son.

The grown-up son she killed. Father, a husk of the man she wanted her Shaun to be, collateral damage in the fight to end the Institute's war with the scared and depleted Commonwealth. 

Five fingers on her right hand and five on her left, and this isn't a dream. She wishes childishly that she could simply close her eyes and be far away from here, sitting in her living room with her husband, their child sleeping softly rooms away and Codsworth's perfectly warmed coffee in her steady grip. She wants it the way children want to sleep at night but can't, their blanket pulled up over their faces and their wide eyes fixated in fear on their closet, where a monster inevitably lurks amongst their clothing.

With a sniff, Yvonne wipes her nose against the fabric of the military suit poking out at her wrist. It's the kind of green she once would've purged from Nate's closet, when they weren't yet living together and he would tell her with a kind smile that she could borrow some of his clothes to stay the night. 

Boston isn't quite dead yet. It's so ferociously alive sometimes that this new silence is even more terrifying than the time she and Cait found themselves in the basement of that museum, before Yvonne left Cait behind to return the Deathclaw's child right into its nest. Foolishly she dreamt many nights after that of a mysterious stranger, kind and smiling - _always_ smiling - returning her baby boy right into her arms after months chasing his shadow around the Commonwealth.

She knows better, now. Deep down she's known better since she first stepped out of cryogenics and her fists ached from slamming against glass as she watched her family shatter to nothing but her and a son she had to get back. She knew better than to think she would find him alive and kind, the same way Nick Valentine knew better than to think that kid with Kellogg was her missing child. It was that child synth doing the same dance it will do for however many years she can look at it after this and not realise it isn't Shaun and it never will be; but it's half Nate and it's that half that made her tell Sturges to send him to the Castle. 

He's the only family she has left and the only thing left of Nate that's the slightest bit alive. Still, she knows it'll take months to pass before she even considers stepping foot in the Castle grounds. 

Yvonne doesn't know if she can handle being called _'mom'_. 

Hours pass and nothing changes, from the wind tearing through her as if she is barely a ghost to the smouldering ruins of the Institute to the stone sinking further and further into her heart. 

War.

War never changes.

 _Oh, Nate_. She gets it. God, does she get it.

.

Three weeks after pressing the detonate button, she's trading copious amounts of scavenged Jet for purified water from Percy in Diamond City, iron helmet replaced with a gas mask and green hood. It's been two and a half weeks since she followed Ellie's call to Nick's partner and promised to help a mother and father find their missing daughter, and a week and a half since she found herself collapsing into a pile of bullet ridden armour inside her own house, pushing the tape Codsworth gave her back into her pip-boy for two straight hours, desperate to hear Nate's voice.

A week and a half since Nate, saying the words she's wanted to hear from him since she killed their son: _"No matter how hard, you do for our family."_

A week and a half since Piper's article, making her a hero she doesn't want to be, forcing her to replace her usual attire for something unrecognisable overnight. 

Two days since tearing through a raider holdout single handedly, burning the place to the ground with bags of molotovs and her handy Deliverer strapped to her hip. Two days since Travis Miles over Diamond City Radio, cataloguing her doings to whoever in the Commonwealth is listening; she's listening, even over a campfire at sometime past four in the morning, eyes closed against flames that remind her nothing of survival and everything of death. 

Travis Miles, voice clear through her pip-boy, saying she's missing. 

She packed up her things and trekked to Diamond City when fresh sunlight began to paint what was once the night sky with the most beautiful shade of blue she's seen since Nate's eyes. And despite this ravaged, ruined world that has dealt her nothing but tragedy and lost, hope gently kindled itself within the dregs of her grieving heart.

Hope, that though this world will never learn to live with her, she will learn to live with it. Not as Wanderer or Knight or General or even the Vault Dweller, but as someone people will forget. The person she crashed into the Commonwealth as will live on as the legend Travis Miles talks about or the infamous Woman Out Of Time that Piper Wright has made her. The masked woman that has taken up residence in Diamond City will be nothing more than a person to whisper about at the noodle stand, and Yvonne wants nothing more than that.

Now, with stars swimming in the night sky above Diamond City, she pockets the caps she's owed after handing over chems and scavenged junk she had no use for to the Mr Handy named Percy. She twists her ring absentmindedly on her finger yet can't bring herself to trade it, even for the two hundred caps a nosy caravan trader in Bunker Hill told her it would be worth. 

The only thing of Nate's she has aside from eleven years of memories is that ring. A materialistic promise to love him forever, 'til death do them part. Giving it up for something as measly as caps… the thought floods her with shame. Shame that is equipped with barbed wire and grief and flickers of her pre-war life with a man she knew she would love forever and then beyond. 

"Wow, lady!" 

Yvonne turns in time to see a child, barreling towards her.

The ring all but jumps out of her leather gloved palm, the child that crashes into her and collides heavily with her frame makes a noise of surprise despite the dozen lights here chasing the dark of night from the markets. Ignoring instincts to check on the child, Yvonne scours the dirty ground for her ring, fingers bringing up dust with every panicked brush of her hand. _It's not here. Oh, God, it's not fucking here -_

"We need to talk," a voice says, cutting through the silence and presenting her ring. She reaches for it, thankful for her covered face so no one had to see the shattered expression she wore for mere seconds, and something akin to her previous expression weaves itself onto her face when her ring is refused to her and pocketed. 

The child is nowhere to be seen, only the carved out footprints of his bare feet laid into the dirt. Along with caps, five or so scattered about, as if he dropped then while running. She's clever enough to work it out.

"What do you want?" Yvonne looks them up and down, eyebrows furrowed under her mask. "I don't know who you think I am -"

"Do you have a geiger counter?"

Yvonne's head cocks to the side, her whole body empty with the absence of her wedding ring. "Mine's in the shop, and keep your voice down," she says, and watches the tension drain slightly from the man's shoulders. She retrieves her key from a zipped pocket and unlocks her front door, not needing to check if the man is following as she steps through the door. "We can talk here, whatever this is about. And I told Desdemona I was done running errands, so if this is about Tom's MILA or a safehouse I'm supposed to find… tell them I don't have the time, would you?"

"You're different from what I was expecting," the man notes, shrugging when she looks at him. He's torn between one foot in the markets and one trepidacious foot in her house. His hat is crooked on his head. "They said you changed and you weren't the same Wanderer everyone knew, but you're barely the same person. I heard whispers about you at a safehouse back when you first joined, how you and Deacon cleared the switchboard of all those synths, and that you walked the trail by yourself.

"Everyone made you out to be this larger than life hero, you know. You're the General of the Minutemen and Nick Valentine's partner, and it's really no secret you've been traipsing around as a Knight in the Brotherhood. If it helps any, you don't have that look about you anymore, that one that made you stick out wherever you go. Carrington said to look out for it and when that didn't work… well, you're the only one up at this time, Deacon said you barely sleep. And you were the only one in the markets aside from the kid."

Yvonne settles Deliverer from her hip to the table she tinkers around with it on. She musters whatever shreds of her lawyer self remains to say, "The kid you unwittingly made an accomplice for the price of a dozen or so caps?" 

"You're good," the man smiles, and the compliment doesn't sit right with her. He gets over his uneasiness about the surroundings and takes a seat near her. "Deacon said to tell you he misses the Dust Bunnies, uh, whatever that means. Desdemona is still sore you defeated the Institute with the Minutemen, so she wasn't too willing to help me track you down. And Tinker Tom is worried about whatever's in your bloodstream so he wants you to visit for a shot of stuff, but between you and me I think he just misses having the infamous Wanderer around HQ."

Her chest reminds her of its steady ache that she knows is because she misses her friends. Deacon and Preston most of all. Still, "I'm not Wanderer anymore, they should've told you that."

"Your name's on the board, far as I'm concerned that means you're with us," the man shrugs in response to her tired sigh. "I wouldn't be here if it wasn't important, okay? It's… it's my partner. After you blew up the Institute, he just disappeared and it's been almost a month, and I know he wouldn't leave without telling me because he wouldn't do that. Not to me, Wanderer. Regardless of you settling down and leaving the Railroad to fend for itself, I could use your help with this one. I'd ask Nick Valentine but you can snoop around without being recognised, he can't." 

"A missing person's case?" Yvonne tightens her grip on Deliverer in her hands, as she fiddles with its suppressor. "You tracked me down for a job anyone else in the Commonwealth could do?"

"No," the man presses, rising to his feet. "I tracked you down because you blew the Institute sky-high without consulting the rest of the Commonwealth, and people lost people because of it. Synth or not, my husband wouldn't leave me, so I'm going to need you to ditch this cushy life you've bought yourself for a couple days and help me get my Jeremy back." A thick silence. "What happened to the General of the Minutemen so willing to help everyone and do the right thing?"

Yvonne's hands tighten, the uncomfortable grip on her pistol ignored to instead focus on the hammering of her heart as her eyes catch on her General's hat and uniform sitting neatly on a bench. It's been there since Preston gave it to her and since she left the Castle, afraid of being needed, and knowing that no matter where she found herself in the future, she wouldn't stick around for longer than she needed to. Even this old baseball stadium reminds her of her hands tangled with Nate's as they cheered at games, sharing popcorn and kissing to the cheers of their peers. 

"My husband's missing," the man repeats, knowing he's hit a soft spot.

Yvonne looks up, and knows with every two hundred year old ache in her body that she'll regret this. "Where did you last see him?"

"At home. But, we have a farm up north, so we take our harvest to the market to get caps. Sometimes we'll give it to HQ or safehouses, to make sure everyone's fed, but mostly we sell it. Besides, it's a good way to hear gossip and it _was_ a good way to talk to Old Man Stockton, before he died." The man shakes his head, trying to focus. "Anyway, about three weeks ago, Jeremy loaded up our brahmin to take to Bunker Hill to make caps off some seeds we didn't need with the worst of winter on its way. Must've been gone all but two hours when I felt the ground start shaking."

"The explosion at CIT," Yvonne doesn't have to guess.

"Yeah, the big explosion at CIT. We use the same roads every time to avoid mutants and raiders, so I'm almost certain it has something to do with the Institute. Jeremy's a synth and knows enough to avoid questions about it, especially since we followed the Freedom Trail and found the Railroad, and plenty others like him. I - I heard rumours around Goodneighbor, that there's a bunch of people who escaped from the Institute before it was destroyed and they're going around finding synths."

His eyes are inlaid with a gentle desperation that Yvonne knows all too well. "You think they took him?" she asks, though she knows the answer. 

"Oh, I think they took him, yeah."

"And you didn't tell Desdemona?"

The man laughs, bitter, and snatches his hat from his head. "She said it's not our fight, we're saving synths, not killing people. Why else would I have gone through all the trouble to track down the woman who destroyed the Institute? You're the only one who'll help me, and if you're willing to kill your own son, I'm willing to bet there are few lines you won't cross. Including killing those Institute scientists."

That same grief she wished to rip from her chest three weeks ago standing opposite the radiation soaked crater of the former Institute returns, and she once again has to face herself. She did nothing more than what was asked of her and the Commonwealth just as soon painted her a monster and murderer as they did a hero. She doesn't have to look this man in the eye to know what he thinks she is.

 _Nate would understand_ , she reassures the lump in her throat. 

"I want my ring back," she lays her hand flat, palm exposed. "That's my only payment. I help you and you leave, let me live here in peace. And you don't tell Desdemona where I am, no matter how hard she tries to get it out of you."

"You should know Des isn't the only person looking for you," the man fishes through his pocket for her wedding ring. It's gold and fits perfectly snug, with a simple engravement on the inside that some days she swears imprints into the fine skin on her finger. "There's the Minutemen, missing their General. The Brotherhood is pretty keen on your whereabouts, too, considering everything that's happened. And others, people who come into various towns asking around for you by name or description."

He places the ring delicately in her hand, a small gesture that she knows is because he understands. "You made a lot of good friends, Wanderer, and you left all of them out in the cold when you disappeared."

Yvonne steadies her hands that have developed a tendency towards shakes, so far removed from the force she was in court. That Yvonne took cases because they tugged at her heart, not because they offered money that would keep her family fed and sheltered; that Yvonne was raised to be the good she wanted to see in the world and almost every day she spent wanting more good, especially in the midst of war. 

She will never be that Yvonne again, not since she died.

The wasteland killed her the moment it let Kellogg stroll into the safety of Vault 111 and kill the man she had loved since he was a boy and she was a girl. She lost her son, then, really. The day the bombs fell. Or maybe that's just her bleeding heart talking. But she certainly lost herself.

Ignoring the way her hands steady once her wedding ring is back, secure on her finger, she finds his gaze. Unable to banish the curiosity from her tone, she says, "What's your name?" 

"Around HQ, they call me Illusion." He steadies the sad waiver of his voice, eyebrows creasing. "Jeremy picked it for me a long time ago but it's stuck. I'd ask yours to be polite, but…"

"Don't worry about it," she assures, and means. Kicking a bag of caps under her workbench, she slides Deliverer into the strap at her hip and doesn't imagine, for even the slightest of moments, Nate's delicate grip on her and how warm his laugh would be against her neck. She'll never have that again; there's no point living in the past when she's in the present, typical days of hers no longer calm and cosy, but instead days and nights spent cowering under the cloak of the moon trying to survive one more day.

That's what they say. Take it day by day. She doesn't bother telling Illusion as much. 

"How far away is your place - your farm - from here? You mentioned it's by Bunker Hill," Yvonne asks, tucking a lighter into the front breast pocket of her raider leathers. Illusion watches her with mostly understanding, some unsureness, but mostly unsureness as she straps a sniper rifle across her back. She's modified it so it's heavier than most but lightweight enough to not noticeably slow her down much.

"Uh, yeah," Illusion confirms. "Jeremy and I have lived there for a few years, since he saved me from some of those hideous gen 2's of the Institute. I've been in love ever since, and so has he, which is exactly why we got married a few months ago and took each other's names, like some old pre-war tradition or whatever. The farm's our home and it's all I'll have left if he's dead. I wouldn't know how to live without him, you of all people should understand that."

Yvonne's body must visibly give away some hint to the expression that flits across her face, as Illusion rushes to apologise.

"I just mean - well, there aren't a lot of widows in the wasteland, oddly enough. You're the first I'd know, and the Commonwealth can't even take responsibility for what happened to your husband. It's just, if I end up a widow, you'd get it. Mutual misery kind of thing. Difference is I wouldn't be able to channel my mourning into mass murdering the Institute because you already did that, but I'd settle for wiping the smirk off of a couple Institute scientist's faces."

"We will," Yvonne promises, eyes flicking over Illusion's weapon of choice: a modified Institute rifle, like the one she gave Cait before they parted ways as friends and unlikely allies. "If they're the ones that took your husband, we'll make sure they can never do it again."

It's so unlike her that she takes a slow step back, allowing her words to permeate the air and for Illusion's cool voiced agreement to follow. She evacuated the Institute so innocent people, including the children, could leave and live above the surface, forced into the wasteland to see the repercussions of their multiple experiments on the Commonwealth. She let them out inexperienced and unprepared the same way they defrosted her after two hundred and ten years of frozen peace; unfairly forced to survive in a world only trying to kill you.

If the scientists have really lived for three weeks above the surface, she'd be more than surprised. She wouldn't quite be impressed but she'd respect them more, for adapting to this world. She knows that feeling better than anyone.

"Wanderer, actually, uh - there's been something I've wanted to ask you, since I heard about you," Illusion, voice wracked with nerves. "Everyone at HQ has read Publick Occurrences, and most of them have heard that radio presenter talking about you. It's just… there are still so many things we don't know, about you or what life was like before it was like this. My question isn't about that, so whatever, I guess I want to know about your son. Shaun. I've heard rumours he was already dead when you blew up the Institute."

"Cancer. He had cancer." _Had._ Past tense. Always past tense with Shaun, now. Always dead.

"I'm sorry," Illusion sighs, an apology sketched into his face. "Did you get to talk to him, before…?"

"Yes." Yvonne gathers whatever shreds of confidence remain and manages to add, "I told him I was sorry and I… I wished it hadn't had to be like this."

"... And what did he say?"

"He said the future of the Commonwealth was dying with the Institute and I had killed them both."

Illusion whistles softly, snapping his knee before retracting back up, all traces of this heavy conversation gone from his expression. "Sure knew how to give a speech, didn't he?"

He pauses, running a hand through his unkempt hair. "Maybe he was right," he sighs. "About our hope for the future being the one thing we sought to destroy. Even though part of me likes the Railroad's ideals of treating synths as the humans they are, part of me wonders what all those people would've done without the Institute. Without synths, Jeremy wouldn't exist. Ghouls would probably still be here, in Diamond City. Brotherhood almost certainly wouldn't have come nosing in on the Commonwealth. Makes you think."

Yvonne's heart has dropped well below the depths of where it normally resides, shattered from mere months in the Commonwealth and the loss of her family. Illusion's words are a bitter pill to swallow.

"We should get going before daylight," she says instead of answering, familiar shakes of grief tightening her hands as they slide a knife into her boot. "We'll head to Goodneighbor first, ask about the Institute scientist's there first."

"You think the mayor's just going to let you stroll in and unnerve his citizens?" Disbelief echoes his words.

"Mayor Hancock's a friend," Yvonne admits, not missing Illusion's quizzical glance in her direction. A _friend_ , if she can call him that after disappearing for so long. "We'll go to him and Fahrenheit first, then I know a couple other places who won't mind us asking around. It's worth asking Dr Amari at the Memory Den, too." She looks back to make sure Illusion's ready to follow. "Good?"

"Sure."

Stepping out into Diamond City, abandoned by its citizens at night, is too familiar an act. Yvonne waits for Illusion to walk out towards the noodle stand to pull her door closed and lock it, tucking her house key into its usual residence in her breast pocket. Sometimes, out of pre-war habit that she'll never shake, she finds she pats her pants pockets for her key with her heart pounding before realising with an embarrassed head shake that it's the same place it always is; secure against her breast, shape pressing into flesh a never-ending reminder. 

Diamond City security doesn't look at her as she passes, always the inconspicuous presence no matter where she is. It's why the helmet or why the mask, because Nate could spot her the size of an ant in a crowd. He told her plenty of times, pressing warm kisses to her exposed shoulder, that she has a face that's simply hard to ignore; she'd blush when he called her beautiful with her fingers curling through his hair, all the silence of a person who doesn't believe what they're being told.

She's pretty but to her, she's only ever been Yvonne. Yet, no one's seen her face, not that she knows of. Kellogg had, and fury unravels at the simple thought of him. She told Amari she forgave him but it doesn't mean that anger is gone, for him having killed her Nate. She'd kill Kellogg a thousand times over if she could; she doesn't wonder what that says about her as a person.

It's days like these she misses Cait, the way she would get this fire in her eyes and Yvonne could read the tension in her body from how tight she clenched her jaw or the looseness or _un-_ looseness of her fists. Cait, itching for a brawl at any and all moments, and the rare moments that facade would drop and she'd put aside her pride for long enough to crawl over to Yvonne's side in whatever hellhole they'd stopped in for the night. Her head would rest on Yvonne's uncomfortable, armoured shoulder, hand brushing hers.

Best friends. Yvonne knows if she ever found it in herself to put her husband to rest and not feel guilty for being lonely without him, she wouldn't mind settling down somewhere with Cait. A lot of days, her tidied up, safe Kingsport Lighthouse calls her name. Other days, Nate's loss is so raw it eats her alive with want and grief.

She rejected Cait months ago, after a tangle with a Deathclaw. They'd simply parted ways next time they passed Goodneighbor and Yvonne's wondered plenty if she ever stopped by Sanctuary like she suggested, after presenting her with a gun she'd spent many long days doing up. 

"If it ever needs a tune up, you should swing around Sanctuary some time," was all she'd said, and Cait never took her up on the offer. 

Sometimes, it's simply easier to accept that people are gone. Dwelling hurts, like a bullet going in and out and back in, bruising each inch of her heart with a pistol made of nothing but misery and nostalgia. Dwelling on Nate is days in the wasteland in power armour, getting shot to feel anything other than her crushing failure.

Five fingers left, five fingers right. She walks right behind Illusion, on his heels, out the gate of Diamond City and follows his lead.

Not dreaming. So very here.

Honestly, she can't be sure what's worse.

"How'd you meet him? Your, uh. Your husband, I mean," Illusion stumbles. Caps click together in his pocket as he walks. "Must've been different, the world that gave birth to this one. I'm guessing he didn't show up on your doorstep with ten of his best brahmin, asking for your hand in marriage?"

Yvonne scoffs, silently humoured. Remembering her, fresh faced and maybe truly beautiful, hand in hand with the boy she'd liked since high school, nearly shatters her placated expression. "A party, my first year of college. I was studying law, pretty far from home, and I was drinking. _A lot_." Her laugh is pained. "Nate offered to walk me home to my campus a few blocks away. He was a friend of a friend so I trusted him, and we couldn't stop laughing the whole way. He held my hand, the entire time, and I only noticed when he let it go and it was cold how much I missed it."

She pauses, Illusion's eyes regarding her with concern. "Then he showed up at my doorstep, not with a ring but a proposal of sorts. I knew I loved him, even then." The lights of Diamond City fade away in the distance. "I knew I always would."

"I'm sorry," Illusion exhales, words genuine. "He sounds like he was a great guy. Deacon said he was frozen, after he died. It must be… it must be nice, is all, getting to see him whenever you want. Sometimes I don't see Jeremy for a couple days and I almost forget what he looks like," a laugh, accentuating his nerves. "Now that it's been almost a month, I don't even remember his voice. That's what I miss the most, I think. The dumb things he would say and just his voice, you know?"

"Yeah," Yvonne settles her hand over Deliverer on her hip as they get some distance from Diamond City. Raiders and mutants are out in spades in these parts. "Trust me, I understand. My memories of Nate's voice are two hundred and ten years old, and they're also all I have." The Boston Common looms in the distance, and Yvonne doesn't miss the incredulous look that crosses Illusion's face as she heads toward it. "It's his voice I miss most, too. And his laugh. It took me months to come to terms with never hearing it again."

"I shouldn't have brought it up, I'm sorry."

The Swan is sleeping, same as normal. Her steps are heavy as she walks, punctuated by the rattle of objects swimming in her bag. "I - I want you to know that if we find Jeremy alive, I have a couple houses up near Concord, at Sanctuary," she offers. "The two of you would be safe there."

"Oh, thanks. Might take you up on that offer sometime."

The old Yvonne retreats back to the memories where she's kept, a woman of roughly two hundred and thirty eight suspended forever in nothing but flashbacks to another life. She spends her days locked in that freezer in Vault 111, staring at her husband's body and willing herself to stop screaming. She doesn't. Ever.

And her screams follow Yvonne the rest of the way to Goodneighbor.


	2. the lies we tell others

Goodneighbor, when they reach it, is the same as it always is. Morning is bleeding through the night and casting shadows across the ground, shadows that she and Illusion keep to as they navigate their way to the Mayor. Predictably, he offers her the speech that he offers new citizens, which he gave her after killing Finn almost at her feet. Mayor Hancock can be merciless, as can anyone, but he has a softness hidden beneath that Yvonne is sure very few have seen besides her.

"John," she interrupts.

His words die on his lips. "Well, I'll be damned," he raises his cigarette to his mouth, making a show of it. "Didn't think I'd see you 'round these parts again, sister. Get sick of whatever backwater hole you ended up in after your little stunt with the Institute? Can't say I'm all that mad about it, so you know. Bastards had it coming." His eyes narrow, but she can read the trust in them. "Who's the friend?"

"I'm helping him track down a missing person," Yvonne wonders if this is how Nick felt, dragging her through the Commonwealth to find her son and avenge her husband. "You hear anything about some Institute refuges, maybe not far from here?"

"Yeah, sounds familiar," Hancock pauses in thought. "Come to think of it, security chased a couple Institute scientist's outta here a couple weeks back, didn't exactly want them poking around after what happened, did we?" He flicks embers from his cigarette. "Tell you what, you and your friend spend a few hours sleeping in Hotel Rexford and I'll see what I can do for that information, sister. Meet me back here after midday, I'll try have what you need."

"Thank you," she says, because she owes him that much. She reaches forward with a gloved hand to touch his wrist, covered in costumed fabric and smaller than her own. 

His eyes refuse to meet hers, cigarette smoke clinging to her clothing as she stands close to him. She's almost tempted to ask how he's doing, considering she killed his brother, but his tight shoulders say enough about his willingness to talk about that particular subject. So, she doesn't speak, instead lets the small comfort of touch speak the volumes she wouldn't be able to do herself; if he was still before, now he's frozen, eyes glazed over and smoke from his lit cigarette the only thing telling her the world hasn't stopped moving.

Yvonne retracts her hand, aware of Illusion's calculating gaze washing over the scene. Months ago, when she told Hancock she needed space, neither of them had been quite aware it'd take them this long to see each other again. He was her friend, for better and for worse, and he'd become a soothing presence to have by her side as she traversed across the deadly territory of the Commonwealth.

She's sorry, but the words won't form in her mouth.

Tearing her attention from Hancock, she turns with Illusion following suit, and does her best to ignore the way Fahrenheit is studying her.

"Yvonne," Hancock says to her back. "Lots of people coming through here looking for you, you know. I get how you must be feeling, but don't forget about your friends, yeah? If you can't count on them, who can you count on?"

The cool breeze laps at the back of her ankles as Hancock's door closes behind her, Illusion's attention fully on her. For a terrifying moment, as she steps towards him and the stairs down, she sees more than feels her body walking. 

"Yvonne?"

She doesn't grace him with an answer, tired legs dragging her down the spiral staircase to outside, across from Hotel Rexford. It's a familiar setting here in Goodneighbor, considering the weeks in between traveling that she's spent here, crashing on Hancock's couch or shilling out ten caps a night for a room to rest her weary eyes in. The room at the top, all the way to the left is already calling her name, in between flashy lights, drifters cooking odd concoctions of meat in a pot, and the neighbourhood patrol casting her second glances.

Clair is manning the desk, tux as tidy as the day Yvonne met her.

"Two rooms," Yvonne slides twenty caps towards her. "Just for the night. Top left free?"

"Yeah, our regular hasn't shown up for a while. All yours, and the one across from it, too," Clair shrugs as she counts the cap, the nonchalant way she waves Yvonne off says she'd almost rather be anywhere else. 

"We could've shared, or you could've let me pay," Illusion says as Yvonne approaches him, hovering five feet behind her. "Really, I'm not even that tired. Kinda hard to sleep these days, since Jeremy… anyway, my point here being you didn't need to do that."

"Don't mention it," is all Yvonne can manage. She heads towards the creaky staircase with the man who feels more like a stray than an employer, and points him to his room once they reach the top. "We'll talk to Mayor Hancock later in the afternoon, once I've rested.  _ Don't _ go anywhere without me, okay?"

Illusion's lips curve up in one direction, showing teeth. "Why, do the people here bite?"

"Yeah, they might."

"Oh," he frowns. "Uh, I'll see you later. Sleep well or whatever."

"Sure, you too," Yvonne clears her throat. "Well, I'll…" 

Her back now to Illusion, she twists the doorknob to her room. 

She doesn't get to open it.

"Yvonne," Illusion chokes, dragging Yvonne's inhale from her throat and tightening her grip on the doorknob in her hand. "Your name, right? It suits you. Better than Wanderer, anyway. Mine's Jin, since we're doing that." A soft laugh, prefaced by, "I won't tell if you won't?" 

" _ Goodnight _ , Jin."

As she pushes open the door and resists all temptation to throw herself onto the bed, she closes the door with a soft kick. Practiced hands undo her armour, allowing it to clatter to the floor in a pile, swift fingers soon letting her hood and mask join the mess. She runs a hand through her hair, usually kept long but since cut short; two weeks and five days since losing Shaun for the last time, retracing her steps back to Kellogg. 

He had scissors in a drawer in one of those many bathrooms, and she'd hacked at her hair until it was nothing but a few fluffy inches on her head. It inevitably reminded her of buzzing Nate's before he left to fight in Alaska, silence wrapping its tight tendrils around them and squeezing, taking the air straight from their chests. They hadn't even spoken that night, just crawled under the covers on their bed and held each other until the sun came up.

The sun didn't get into Kellogg's compound. Yvonne had hugged herself to sleep in the dark and woke up in the dark. 

She hadn't had to count her fingers to know this wasn't a dream because no dream could possibly be this cruel, nor could it understand the sheer visceral nature of her grief. It was brutal and gutting, like a knife carving up her insides and taking them, leaving her empty and unable to move, and wishing with the gaping hole where her chest should be for a touch that is kind. No more fists that intend to bruise, but instead the loving brush of Nate's fingers pushing her hair from her face or Preston's hand on hers as she lost her son.

Even now, sitting in bed wishing she'd had the sense to take the photo albums with her before the world burned, loneliness swallows every inch of the room.

She's going to kill every last Institute scientist, for her Nate, for Hancock, Deacon, Nick, and Danse, for Jeremy and Illusion, for every other family they bled, and for her tiny Shaun, made into a monster. The Commonwealth has dealt with the repercussions of the Institute experiments for years, it's time the Institute did too.

As she falls to sleep and as she wakes, afternoon sun now warm on her bare face, she knows this will be over soon. Whether she survives it or not, she isn't sure. But she'll go to Vault 111 if the world doesn't bury her by then, and she'll bury Nate. Illusion was right, about being lucky because she can see him whenever she wants. She's tired of luck. She'll pull up the dirt in their yard and make a grave big enough for him, and she'll ignore Preston's eyes on her as he helps her bury her dead husband. And she won't cry. She won't.

But maybe one day soon, someone else will as they bury whatever of her body is available to bury. A grave next to her husband, not quite as big a hole yet no lighter to dig. Or maybe she'll die alone and undisturbed, like the skeletons that litter the wasteland. There's something peaceful in that.

She buries her head under her arms, now groaning at the sunlight. It's orange with afternoon, bathing the room in a warm glow. It's days like these, bathing in warm sun, that it's easiest to forget the world she knew is gone. It always takes her an extra minute, as if waiting for permission from her alarm clock to get up and get ready for work. It hits her the same way every time, with numbed-with-sleep limbs screaming awake and small tufts of her short hair falling across her forehead.

Her heart pounds so loud her ears can't hear anything else.

Rolling over, she half expects Nate to be there. His hair would be mused with sleep and sticking up at old angles, his face so peaceful it'd be hard to imagine him in the midst of war, slight freckles dusting each cheek and over the bridge of his nose. His mind, pacing even in sleep, would settle as she kissed his cheek and cuddled closer to him.

Opening her eyes to the empty space on the mattress beside her is almost, in this very moment, one of the hardest things she's ever done. If she ignores watching her husband die, stumbling into the Commonwealth for the first time, finally understanding all those years in Alaska that Nate couldn't recover from, or choosing between her son and the above ground he'd abandoned, content to watch burn and die before his eyes. Right now, to memories resurfacing after over two hundred years, the worst thing was waking up alone.

Still is. But that's different, and has been since Yvonne was widowed.

A rhythmic knocking at her door wakens her.

"Time to go, Wanderer," Illusion, muffled through the rough wooden door. "I'll wait for you downstairs."

With practiced hands, Yvonne gets her armour situated without much of a struggle. Her fingers struggle to situate her hood and gas mask, hands shaking with the straining effort of it all.

She leaves the door open behind her and sets off down the stairs, stumbling unnoticed by most into the lobby.

Illusion is in the corner, conversing with a drifter she recognises instantly. When you're not looking for him, he tends to pop up at the most inconvenient of times. Yvonne would bet four hundred caps and the sunglasses permanently attached to his face that he heard a tip about the Institute and Desdemona sent him out to investigate. Or, he's as good of a spy as he says he is and he's been tailing Yvonne since she last went to the North Church but was too cowardly to actually go in and talk to him; despite how much she's missed him, she sincerely wishes he were anywhere else.

"Ah, the woman of the hour," Deacon drawls, leaning casually against the wall. Illusion slinks away from her gaze. "Our mutual friend here was just catching me up and I'm all ready to go. Just say the word."

"What are you doing here?" Her voice stays low and even as he takes in her new get up. It's uncomfortable, in a word. Familiar, in another.

"Oh, right, I'm sorry," Deacon clears his throat. "Do you have a geiger counter?"

She stiffens. "No."

"Jeez, you're no fun.  _ Anyway _ , now that that fun is over, orders at HQ have changed. I'm on the case now, Wanderer," Deacon smiles, nothing apologetic about it. "Say hello to Illusion's new partner in crime. I'm thinking we get matching fedoras, maybe embroider our initials on the side, your thoughts?"

Yvonne's hand travels to Deliverer at her hip, purely on instinct. "I wasn't  _ on _ a case, Deacon," she argues, volume barely above a hushed whisper. "I was cornered at my home and dragged here to Goodneighbor to help someone find their missing spouse."

"Hey, don't shoot the messenger. I'm not exactly happy about teaming up with you, either," Deacon's words wash over her, flooding her with previously ignored shame. "Now that that's over, I can't wait to get back to HQ and tell Carrington you bought Illusion's story. Good, huh? Some people owe me a lotta caps for that little stroke of genius. And since I haven't mentioned your involvement in the job now that I'm here, you're more than welcome to tag along, as long as you let me take the lead. I'm sure you understand, right?" 

"You made your boy here track me to my home for a job you can suddenly handle?" 

"Okay, ignoring your obvious attitude," Deacon's hands move about of their own accord, oblivious to him. The familiarity tugs reluctantly at each corner of her mouth. "No one  _ made  _ anyone track you down. Did we encourage it? Sure, but there was a lot of disagreement at HQ about getting you involved, considering what you did to the Institute. Des has had me trying to find these Institute scientist's for weeks and your meeting with Mayor Hancock is the closest anyone's gotten to finding them.

"Yeah,  _ my  _ meeting with Hancock."

"Hey, he's a friend of mine, too," Deacon holds his hands up in mock defence. "Besides, I figured you kinda owed me for this. Des and I spent years looking for the Institute and you didn't even consult us about it when you conjured that permanent radstorm around it. You used us, Wanderer. You'll forgive me if now we wanna cash in on that."

Months ago, Yvonne would've called Deacon her best friend. They traveled everywhere together and there weren't many people she trusted more than him; now, locked in an unwinnable argument, she knows she buried her ties with Deacon and the Railroad with the Institute. She had intended to use them but she'd found a comfort with him that was rare to find, and it had kept her around HQ. Glory was a force to be reckoned with and they'd found a friendly rhythm to fall into, and Yvonne would be lying if she said it didn't keep her coming back.

There were times, of course, where Carrington admitted he worried about her and she'd hang around him as an annoying presence at his shoulder, asking questions she knew the answer to. There were also hours with Tinker Tom, discussing MILA and the Institute bugs in her blood as they sipped warm drinks around his workbench, various junk she'd picked up on her travels traded for Deliverer modifications.

She used them, but it didn't mean it had become real after sometime. She supported their cause and helped synths despite desperately missing her son, and hadn't gotten a thank you offered from anyone. Preston thanked her so often she debated asking him to stop and with him she found hope for a brighter, kinder Commonwealth for the people living in it. The Railroad seemed selfish in a way compared to the Minutemen, and her heart had picked the alliance in the end that would one day allow her son, still missing then, to thrive in a world so alive it birthed  _ hope _ .

She told Desdemona, barely minutes after Drummer Boy welcomed back the  _ Wanderer  _ that she chose the Minutemen and their cause, no matter how selfish it seemed to the Railroad. The world was cruel as it were and regardless of Yvonne's responsibilities as Wanderer, the people of the Commonwealth needed saving more than the synths.  _ Preston  _ needed her.

She'd taken the General's uniform back to Diamond City with her and tucked it away, but not because it meant any less to her than the Railroad. If anything, it meant more. The Minutemen were securing a kinder, less brutal future that most everyone, including the children, were forced to shelter from; Piper's sister and the young residents of Diamond City, and the children her friends would one day have and raise under parched skies.

Yvonne's a mother. Or, she was. Maybe this future she was protecting for her human son was nothing but a ruse, little more than one last practical joke from the world before they handed her the child synth she was meant to mother. A son that wouldn't need the Minutemen, but would need the Railroad. Desdemona got the last laugh after all.

Yvonne wonders, for a pained moment, if Illusion was telling the truth about her codename still chalked on the board.

"I tried to come back," she explains. Deacon's eyebrows unfurrow the slightest. "And what, I didn't so you lie to me? You of all people should underneath what it's like to hear someone say they lost their spouse. You… you  _ used _ that against me and -"

"Hey, HQ voted on it," Deacon interrupts, a placating hand filling the space between them, cutting fading tension. "I was against it, you should know. Des had the final vote and she knew you'd go for it, if you could save someone's husband. After everything we've been through, you should know I wouldn't do that, Wanderer."

Yvonne schools her face into something resembling seriousness, posture corrected and hand moved away from Deliverer. "So, there's no Jeremy?"

Illusion leans away from the wall, an apology sketched into his features. "Actually, Deacon's full of shit, as per usual. He's bitter that I got to take lead on this assignment. Jeremy's missing and it wasn't a  _ sob story, _ he's my husband. And he's not going to get found if we just hang around here, talking. So if we could…"

Months ago, when Deacon was Yvonne's shadow and closest confidant, she would've punched him playfully in the shoulder for a trick like that. Now, she stares at him with each of their gazes hidden and history permeating the thin air between them, and has the sense to know their times of comradery are behind them. They're one of the most painful things to be; past friends, traces of one another's voices and faces lingering in memories that might as well have been a hundred years ago. 

_ Wanderer. _

Desdemona was right, when she said that fit. Yvonne can't think of anything that fits her more than another name for abandoner, and Wanderer means a person who roams, a person who never plants a seed. Wanderer, so brutally lonely with no one to blame but herself, kindling friendships in every corner of the Commonwealth only to move on once it reaches its peak.

She traveled with Curie until their feet bled, helping people around Diamond City and the like until Yvonne gathered the courage to go inside. She traveled with Nick until he helped her get into Kellogg's brain then sent him back to his agency so she could clear her head, which involved walking back to Sanctuary to drag Preston along helping the settlements she and Curie had established. Then, when she was tired of that, she found Cait in the Combat Zone and spent days at Kingsport Lighthouse nursing the two months worth of injuries she'd been dealt since leaving the vault that had become her husband's tomb.

Then, Hancock, when Cait had helped her get to Virgil and get the biggest lead to finding Shaun that she'd gotten in months. Then, Deacon, when she realised she'd kept the mayor of Goodneighbor from his people too long. Then, Danse, when helping synths grew too tiresome and she felt like wiping raider blood from her power armour. Then, no one. Weeks alone doing up Kingsport Lighthouse, hoping one day she'd be able to bring Shaun here and he'd grow up by the sea like she had, with salt in his hair and sand clinging to his clothes, and watching the sunset from the rocks every afternoon.

No one, for a really long time. 

Then, finally, Preston again. The two of them traveled for days upon days fortifying settlements while she wasted time, knowing with the ache in her chest that the motherly thing to do was help her son, finally found, cleanse the wasteland the Commonwealth had become. Most days, she wondered how she'd tell Nate if he were here that she was planning to kill their son. Other days, she'd miss three months ago, stumbling on the elevator up into the new world, shielding her eyes from the blinding warmth of a sun scorching land already burnt.

She isn't sure where the people she once called friends are, if they're alive even. Some of them are, apparently asking around for her here and at Diamond City. She's not entirely sure how to feel about it, but for their sake, she hopes they never manage to track her down. It's here with Deacon and earlier today with Hancock that's reminded her so much of why she avoided everyone after the Institute, and why they were better off pretending they never knew her. 

"Okay, lead the way," is all she manages to say, aware of Deacon once again looking her over. They were friends, she reminds herself, as his judgement cuts through her like a knife through butter. 

"Sure thing," Deacon replies, back to Yvonne's as she examines his choice of wear.

Typical Goodneighbor clothing, fashioned from bits of fabric that colours completely clash, stitched together and covered in patches, and warm on the approaching winter nights. Near everyone here is dressed the same, apart from her and a few other colourful characters, the likes of Hancock and Magnolia and such. Deacon could almost pass for a Goodneighbor resident if he wanted, but that's the magic of disguise and his ability to blend. It was hers, too, and saying as such had earned her a lighthearted groan from Glory.

Illusion, in boots and a leathery brown jacket, sticks out like a thumb. No one taught him the importance of disguise or camouflage, though she imagines it works for him. If she had seen him before, she couldn't remember, because he had one of those faces that you discounted as young and stupid, and occasionally as nothing more than a kid out of depth who wouldn't last the month. 

He's proven he's nothing like his looks more than once, almost as if his appearance itself is a trick. An illusion.

Between her, Deacon, and Illusion, she can well imagine they don't quite sell the inconspicuous vibe they're going for. They're too different, for a start, and she's almost surprised when they leave Hotel Rexford that more heads don't turn to look at them. It's fortunate it's Goodneighbor, a place renowned for housing the freaks of the Commonwealth that just don't fit anywhere else or aren't cut for the cushy lifestyle in Diamond City.

"I've heard whispers around the scientists hanging around Hallucigen," Deacon starts, as they cross the small street. Mayor Hancock's room is so close they could practically trip and fall into it. "But that's all it is. Whispers. We need something concrete if we're going to go in guns blazing for kidnapped synths."

"Better get something soon," Illusion presses a cap between his fingers, fidgeting as they walk in out of the rain and start up the spiral staircase towards Hancock. "It's been almost a month and no sign of them. How many do we know are missing?"

"Seven, including Jeremy and a woman named Curie," Deacon's shoulders tense as they draw in on Hancock and Yvonne stumbles up the stairs behind him.  _ Curie _ . "No one's linked the disappearances but they're all synths, or at least, we hope they are. Why else would Institute scientists need them?"

Yvonne presses close behind them as Deacon greets Hancock, discussion started with her having barely said a word. She hovers, much like a fly on the wall, until Illusion waves her the small distance over with an invitation to sit beside him. She takes it, cautiously so.

"Farm not far from here reported supplies that were stolen a couple days ago, mostly food but some medicine," Hancock produces a crudely drawn map from inside his coat, various building names scribbled across it that Yvonne effortlessly recognises. "And another one, a bit farther. These guys might be on the move, if you ask me. That, or they're running outta stuff and getting desperate enough to start stealing. But your missing synths? I ain't a damn clue what they might want with them, brother."

Deacon stares at the map. Behind his sunglasses, Yvonne imagines his eyes darting across the paper, scanning the names of the farm's and building an entire narrative in his head that he'll dazzle them with once they're out of here and safe to discuss it in private. Deep down, she knows this will be harder to solve than a simple piece of paper with some drawings, and regardless of Deacon's ability, it isn't going to be a simple task. Regardless of the ability of  _ anyone  _ in this room, it isn't going to be simple.

If they figure it out, it'll still take weeks to track the scientists down. 

"Maybe they're…" Yvonne trails off, eyebrows narrowed. Illusion pats on her armoured thigh, encouraging. "Maybe they're making their way somewhere. They hit this farm here and after a few days, which would be enough time to get an organised group together, they hit this farm. They're not staying anywhere because they're on the move, probably heading-" her gloved finger pushes firm on a small circular scribble meant to indicate a farm. "Well, here. Plot the course and they'll be…" 

"Shit." Deacon meets Yvonne's gaze, understanding clear in the smooth lines of his face.

Illusion looks over the map, trying to catch on to what everyone seems to know but him. "Concord? Why is that so bad if they're heading there? It's an old pre-war town, I didn't think anyone was living there." His eyebrows suddenly dart up past his eyeline. "They're heading for Sanctuary, aren't they? But, why? And why bother kidnapping synths for that?"

For something Yvonne's been doing since she crash landed in the wasteland. A barter or a trade; the destroyer of the Institute for seven well-loved synths, including Illusion's husband and Curie. It would really be as simple as throwing her to them and then turning their back on her, letting her face the consequences of her actions for the last time. It wouldn't eliminate the Institute threat once and for all but it would quieten them, surely, if the survivors knew the woman who killed their hope underground was going to be rotting beneath it, same as their friends and family, and Father...

Preston might be burying her sooner than she thought.

"No way to know for sure," Hancock reminds them. "Best to wait until they hit another farm to know for sure. They hit one off target, we'll know for sure they got a different plan."

"That could take weeks," Yvonne massages the tension from her jaw with shaking fingers. "What farm would they hit, if they were going towards Sanctuary?"

Deacon starts shaking his head before she finishes, Illusion's own silent protest dying on his lips. "They'd kill you."

Yvonne's heart steadies itself against its momentarily vicious beating as Deacon's concern settles in its cracks, her eyes studying Hancock's map. The closest farm would be Sunshine Tidings if they were going to Sanctuary for her, but if they weren't going to Sanctuary, there would be plenty of other farms to get supplies from if they were desperate enough to steal. She says as much to Deacon, then adds, "Sunshine Tidings is right before Abernathy, which is right before Sanctuary. They'd avoid the Slog, probably scared of the ghouls, but… if they do go over that way, we know it's nothing personal."

"And if it is?" Illusion asks, when no one wants to. "What if they stroll into Sanctuary asking for your head on a stick in exchange for our people?"

"If they really have Curie, then I go with them," Yvonne doesn't miss Illusion's widened eyes, false attention on the map to avoid looking at her companions. "She's a close friend, from months ago, and if anything happened to her it'd be my fault. I'm the one that put her in the synth body. And… they have Jeremy, don't they? I think that's reason enough."

Deacon whistles under his breath, voice unbacked by its usual humour as he says, "Lotta people that wouldn't be happy with that, Wanderer. Letting the Institute scientist's take things is one thing, letting them take you is another. Like I said, they'd kill you."

"I got mine when I destroyed the Institute," Yvonne's vision blanks for a moment, softer memories from a kinder time of her and Nate crowded around Shaun's crib. "And when I killed the guy that shot my husband. Maybe - maybe everyone deserves some atonement. To the Institute, I'm the monster that blew up their home and killed their friends, and after all the revenge I set out to get, I can't blame them for wanting the same. I just - I dont get how they're moving so fast, with barely days between hits. There's no way, especially this soon on the surface. They've barely been out a month."

Silence settles over the room. 

After a beat, Illusion places his hand just above her knee, voice low as he speaks. "So, revenge, did it help?"

"No," Yvonne swallows, harsh. It's a bitter pill. "It didn't. My family's still dead, aren't they?"

"What'd the Institute scientist's want here?" Deacon turns to Hancock, sunglasses slipping slight on the bridge of his nose. Illusion, expression still crumbled, barely notices the change in conversation. "To shop?"

"Weren't doing much, but you know how it is," Hancock's hand fumbles for a lighter in his jacket, "Folks in Institute uniforms are bad for morale."

Deacon snorts, "Yeah, I can well imagine, buddy." Yvonne watches Illusion's shaking hands and his foot tapping nervously on the floor. "Guess we should say thanks and get outta your hair, or lack thereof. We appreciate you taking the time to talk to us, with you being a busy mayor and all."

"Anything for my favourite rag-tag group of secret agents," Hancock grins, and Yvonne almost smiles back with how much she's missed him. "Don't let her go so long without checking in, will you?" he asks Deacon. "After the Institute fell, heard a lot of talk she went with it. Nice to finally out that little thing to rest, if you catch my drift." 

He's glad she isn't dead, that's all. During their days together on the road, he'd mentioned once or twice about making their traveling duo a permanent arrangement. The idea of living with her trauma for another couple hundred years was too harsh a concept to imagine and she had simply waved him off, brushing the encounter off to nothing more than the weeks they'd spend together with no other company. You spend weeks with anyone you like and you'd realise how good you had it, too; enough to contemplate semi immortality.

Some cold nights, when they laid back and watched the skies, she found herself wanting forever less and less. The lack of light pollution brought out constellations she would've killed to see as a kid, and it goes without saying that in some way, she also killed to see them now. Her and Hancock were closer to the comradery of her and Deacon than they ever were to the awkward energy that plagued her and Cait, but it was good nonetheless and they would have traveled together longer if she hadn't felt like she was keeping Hancock from where he was supposed to be.

Forever. She can't imagine it, or anything close to it. Most days, she avoids gunfire and wonders how long the world will let her do this before it decides she's paid her dues; when it does, she hopes it takes her to wherever Nate is.

Forever seems so far to where she is now, sitting on a couch watching a ghoulified man by the stolen name of John Hancock settle his lighter back in the pocket of his costume. Nate would get a kick out of it, the same way she imagined his fond laughter following her when she had accepted the role of the Silver Shroud from Kent and gone on to hand out vigilante justice with an impersonation of the hero that didn't at all come close to Nate's own from a time few remembered. 

Destroying the Institute, if she's kind, was a kind of vigilante justice. Same as taking out the scattered remnants of the Institute's citizens, which will come someday. Some day when she's not so tired she'd hand herself over to them just for a rest, and when she's not carrying her sins like weights on her shoulders and wishing for some kind of penance for everything she's done.

"She isn't too hard to track down," Illusion offers her a complacent hand that she hesitates to accept, faces around her blurred with inattention. "Just follow the sound of trouble and she's usually at the end of it."

"Amen, brother."

Deacon shakes Hancock's hand on the way out and she does the same, aware of the way it lingers for a moment too long to be a casual handshake. His hand is unbelievably warm in hers and he squeezes it tight, the late afternoon sun casting shadows of his tricorn hat across his face and adding age to a man she's only ever seen as young. Younger than her pre-war twenty eight, at least. In a way, the handshake is worth more than any parting hug they could share, and she carefully squeezes back.  _ Goodbye. _

She smiles at him even though he can't see beneath her mask. "Thanks for the help, Mayor Hancock."

"For you, sister? Anything."

Yvonne can tell he means it without having to ask as much, keeping eye contact for a few seconds longer than necessary before breaking the handshake. He watches her descend down the staircase behind a chattering Deacon and Illusion, and when she glances back, she finds the strong doors to his usual dwelling closed. A sight she's seen more than once, though it's nice to be on the side of it knowing he forgives her for leaving Goodneighbor indefinitely and not giving word to anyone where she went.

Forgiveness. A word that is scarce in the wasteland and was scarce prewar, and she knows, having seen the worst of people in her years as a lawyer. She never did quite get to brush off her degree after Shaun and it's that simple thought that takes her to the last day before she became what Kellogg lovingly referred to a frozen dinner, a cheap way of referencing the woman who had trekked the Commonwealth trying to find him. He could've told her then; how easy it would've been, to mention her son.

The wind outside ruffles her clothes and muffles Deacon and Illusion, talking between themselves at her front. It reluctantly takes her back to the rooftop of the CIT building, a breeze tangling her long hair and fluttering Shaun's long, white coat. 

A part of her that remained his mother wants to stumble back in time and take him in her arms, making him feel safe and warm and loved the way he should've felt growing up. She would hold him and her elderly son would hold her back, and she wouldn't be brought to tears in front of him about her being a sick experiment or her husband being collateral damage. She would hold him for what could be eternity and they would heal together, as the mother and son they were robbed of.

They're dead, now. Those two people dancing in made up memories and nothing more than trivial what if's are gone, one buried and one killed, and between the two, she isn't sure which one she's meant to be.

Yvonne. Just Yvonne.

Shaun is dead, she forgets. He's dead and there's nothing she can do.

Her eyes blur and then refocus, taking in the small details of the Memory Den. Urma sits somewhat provocatively with the chairs full of paying clientele, Dr Amari busying herself behind her at a terminal. Yvonne simply watches, the setting bringing up nothing but things from a past life she can't forget, until a sharp jab crashes into her ribs in the form of Illusion's elbow. His expression is encouraging while Deacon's is distracted, in a world of his own as she so often is sometimes, too.

Sometimes the only way to keep ahead of the waves is to splash in them every now and again, head well above water. That thought follows her up towards Amari, ignoring a pair of curious eyes tracing her every moment with learned calculation.

"Dr Amari," Yvonne says, voice strained. She clears it, awkward. "I was hoping to speak with you downstairs, if you don't mind. It's about… it's the Institute."

"Uh, follow me," Amari answers, mindless. Out of earshot, she adds, "What about the Institute?"

"A group of their best scientists escaped," Deacon materialises at Yvonne's side, answering for her. That faraway glare to his eye is long gone. "We think they're planning something. HQ thinks it's a device, of sorts."

Amari pulls an expression that Yvonne has come to know as a trademark of hers, all gentle wrinkles resting in her face, widened pupils, and shoulders tensed. She saw it many times in her brother, a seasoned mechanic that found more science and technicality in his trade than some of the scientists and doctors she met as a law student. It was never a look that said he was smarter than her, but one that she saw and knew meant he'd hit some kind of breakthrough that he'd ramble about in a language that sounded only part English.

He had been twenty-one when the bombs would've hit. He would've been twenty-one when he died, is more accurate. His name conjures itself under her tongue and heat rises in her already warm cheeks, warning her of tears she has spent months pushing away.

"Hey, come on," Illusion grips her shoulder, a kind smile she doesn't deserve offered her way. "Whatever this is can wait, we're so close to-"

In the distance, Deacon and Amari are talking in hushed, conspiring tones. Yvonne catches snippets of a conversation she was supposed to be involved with, Hancock's crudely drawn map flashing in and out of her mind's view as if taunting her with something. It's there then it's not, a tear rolling gently down one cheek that she's more than thankful is hidden behind her mask while her fingers tense in their gloves. Her and her brother spent years, one as a child and the other nearing adolescence, plotting pranks against their parents from their separate bedrooms whispering into these handheld things he'd made.

_ That's it, _ her exhale crackles through her gas mask.  _ She's got it. _

"Gregory," the word sounds like poison out loud. "My brother, Gregory, he… he used to tinker. When we were kids, he made these talkies we could use from opposite ends of our house. Is it possible the scientists are in different groups, using communication devices? It would explain the weird path they chose up to Sanctuary, if it's not one group but…"

"But two," Deacon finishes. Amari  _ hmms _ and turns her back to them. "This might be worse than we thought. I need to get word back to Des."

"Me and Wanderer can handle this," Illusion offers, sensing the same eagerness to Deacon's step that Yvonne does. "And, uh, tell Tinker Tom he was right, too. The sniper rifle Wanderer bought off him is pretty damn sweet."

Yvonne becomes suddenly aware of its presence strapped to her back, a kind of safety that only a weapon can provide in the wasteland. It's saved her skin more than once, and the skin of her friends, and its weight reminds her that she misses Tinker Tom. Selling junk to various vendors around the Commonwealth just didn't feel right when she was so used to lugging bags of trash to HQ to sell him. He was right, too; the sniper rifle  _ is _ pretty damn sweet and it's easily some of the best caps she's ever spent.

"Got a message for HQ, Wanderer?"

Yvonne considers her options for a moment, before, "Tell Des I say hi," tumbles out involuntarily. Deacon's eyebrows crawl up his forehead, a familiar smile wrinkling the soft skin at the corners of his mouth.

"Will do," Deacon winks. Yvonne wants to strangle the pleased look from his face.

Illusion's voice follows Deacon's out of the Memory Den: "Don't take too long, or Wanderer and I might have to put together a search party."

Amari kicks them out soon after and Yvonne curls up in her room at the Hotel Rexford without dinner, replaying her husband's voice again and again through her pip-boy. Night comes and goes, and morning arrives in its absence.

She doesn't sleep a wink.

Yet, she dreams. 

A rooftop and a man half her and half his father, his cancer eating him from the inside out. 

_ I hope you manage to find peace, mother.  _ His voice scratches her ears.  _ I hope you find peace.  _ Boston shrivels to nothing around them but dirt and death.  _ I hope you find peace. _

A dream. A memory. The figure of her dead husband suspended forever in cryogenics, and her son dying.

_ I hope you find peace,  _ Shaun says, eyes swallowed by darkness.  _ I hope you find peace. _

In the end, she kills him. She always does. It's the only end to this that she knows.

  
  


"You want the bad news or the good news?" Deacon asks, feet kicked up on Mayor Hancock's coffee table. He's been gone for two whole days and there's a small scratch on his cheek that says more than he will about his journey to HQ and back. "If it's going to save you time deciding, there's no good news. Desdemona just thought it might soften the blow if you thought there was."

Yvonne chews a mouthful of noodles, container in her hand courtesy of Illusion. He sits beside her, sipping from a bottle of Nuka Cherry that has long since lost its last hint of fizz but he's content, and it isn't hard to read from his loose shoulders and lack of nervous energy that despite Deacon's bad news, he isn't worried. Either that or he's reached the stage of acceptance of loss that Yvonne hasn't yet reached herself, Nate's words from the holotape permanently slotted in Yvonne's pip-boy flicker behind her eyelids every time they close.

She swallows, and makes a vague motion at Deacon encouraging him to continue.

"I have good news," Illusion says, a self satisfied smirk on his face. "I have noodle cups."

"I didn't put together a whole speech on my way over here to have you upstage me," Deacon's frown is only half serious. His eyes hidden once again beneath dark sunglasses lock with Yvonne's, her guard up with her usual gas mask and attached hood neatly piled in her lap. "Bad news from HQ, Wanderer. Des hasn't heard anything.out of the ordinary and even Tom couldn't find anything with the MILA's he made you set up. If the Institute survivors are communicating, it's not in a way we could find."

_Institute survivors,_ he said _._ _Survivors_.

Her noodles taste like rubble as she chews another bite. Resisting the urge to cover up her face once again, she ignores Illusion fidgeting with his Nuka Cherry bottle in her peripheral and focuses instead on a piece of hair tickling her ear. "The good news is, they haven't killed anyone."

"That we know of." Deacon shifts and she can see the purpling of exhaustion dragging underneath his eyes. He's, understandably, tired.

"That we know of," she agrees. Illusion crinkles something in his fist and she flinches, a conditioned response after weeks alone in the Commonwealth. Every noise sounds like a threat, even in relative safety. "How long has it been since they took Jeremy?"

"When you destroyed the Institute with your merry band of army misfits, it took us a while to locate everyone," Deacon's voice lowers, the shadow of a Goodneighbor watchman blocks part of the light filtering in from under the door. "At safehouses, especially. Illusion came crashing into HQ a few hours later, saying Jeremy had been kidnapped by, well… the Institute. There was a major case of Groundhog day between everyone as you imagine, wondering if they'd collectively imagined the Institute's destruction."

Deacon's expression darkens, curiosity dancing on his tongue as he says, "How did anyone get out anyway? People saw the explosion from here."

"Been wondering that myself, sister," Hancock's voice joins the conversation. "Lotta talk in the streets about your Minutemen issuing an evacuation."

"I sent out the evacuation notice on Shaun's terminal," Yvonne settles her half eaten noodles on the table, suddenly not hungry. "There were innocent people down there. I met some kids, too, and… it wasn't their fault. Some of the people in the Institute deserved a second chance above ground in the Commonwealth. A fate worse than death to some maybe, but there were good people I couldn't kill. They granted me the same mercy once, sixty years ago. I guess I was paying it back."

"And now they're possibly trying to kill you," Illusion's voice in the conversation is loud, almost too loud. "Did you regret it, when you pressed the detonator? I mean, did you regret any of it?"

Yvonne manages a laugh, pressing her hands into fists to steady the anger scraping her heart raw. Deacon tries to smooth things over, his expression characteristically apologetic and visible even beneath his sunglasses. After everything she's done, she considers if she thinks she deserves it and decides she doesn't. 

"When I pressed the detonator button, I only regretted that I thought things could be different for a while. Like, I could find a way to have my son and the end of a bitter war all in one. I learned the hard way that I couldn't when I stormed the Institute and found him dying anyway. Even if I had sided with him and bought into the hope for the future being with his scientists, how long would we have had together before he just died anyway? A  _ week _ ?" Her voice breaks. "A few days more with a stranger I had to call son weren't worth it."

Illusion's hand is warm on her knee, his eyebrows knitted together. Deacon doesn't say a word.

She continues, gathering her grief from under her tongue and swallowing it back down. "Mostly, I… mostly I regretted that I had believed killing Kellogg and ridding the Commonwealth of the Institute would bring back a man who's been dead for sixty years. And it didn't bring him back, obviously. But I guess the foolish part of me thought if there was a benevolent god looking down, he'd give him back out of pity."

"You told me before," Illusion's hand on her knee tightens subconsciously, "that when you met your husband, you knew you'd love him forever. I'm sorry about that."

"Yeah, me too."

A quiet falls over the room for a moment, too reminiscent of a minute's silence you'd take to honour the dead. There was a long list of those in the last world and in this one, and now Yvonne can add the names of her family, from her parents and younger brother to her husband and son. Eventually she'll join it; there are hours where all she thinks about is how long until her time is up and wonders if Nate ever dedicated time to thinking the same during his war days in Alaska. 

In the end, it was the war that killed him. In the end, everyone Yvonne has killed can be blamed on a war that was meant to end with a fiery blast.

Preston said the same. Destroying the Institute was the end of a war but the war was still far from ending, and there wouldn't be a shortage of soldiers lining up to die for it. If Nate was here, he'd be standing there with them. For a long while, she was too, as their General.

Unable to bear the sound of nothing but her lone heart beating tenaciously, she says, "We're going to find Jeremy." Nate's brave spirit embraces her, its touch cold. "I don't care how long it takes, we'll - we'll find him. I promise."

Carefully she places a gloved hand over Illusion's, his skin warm against the leather of her glove. It's with this that she remembers everyone in this room has lost a loved one somewhat recently and that the loss has nestled comfortably in them all, making them stricken with silent grief and survivor's guilt. Aside from Shaun, Yvonne was the sole survivor of the event in Vault 111 and that sticks with her every day. Same as Barbara's loss sticks with Deacon, and Hancock's blame aimed at no one but himself for what happened with his brother. 

She meets Illusion's gaze and he sees past it. If he does get his Jeremy back, hell be the luckiest guy in this room and just about every room after it. He nods his solemn understanding.

Hancock clears his throat in the corner of the room, arms folded across his chest. "Don't mean to be a wet blanket, but you folks got a plan?"

"A friend -  _ Sturges _ \- he might be able to latch onto the signal of the Institute communications," Yvonne realises. "He got me into the Institute in one piece and got the Minutemen in a few months after. Something like this should be easy for him, considering. It's worth asking him, unless anyone has a better idea?"

"Trip to Sanctuary in order?" Deacon leans back, tension fading to his typical facade of casualness. Yvonne envies him for it. "Better pack our stuff up and get going if we wanna make it there within the next few days. And I don't know about you but I don't wanna make the trip pass the Commons after daylight."

"Swan gives me the creeps," Illusion agrees. "Jeremy and I got too close to it once and it  _ chased  _ us. Scary as hell, man."

Yvonne smiles briefly at the thought before a twin smile appears on Deacon's face and they're laughing, much to Illusion's disgrace. He pouts as a previously silent Mayor Hancock's chuckle joins the laughter, the atmosphere of the room for the first time in days not one of misery and hopelessness, but of something warm. 

Illusion was right when he said she needed people, and Hancock was right when he said she shouldn't have left her friends in the dark, and Nick Valentine was right when she stumbled into his agency refusing to go to Far Harbor to help someone find their missing daughter and he told her she needed to surround herself with people to heal. At that point in time, healing from any of this had been the absolute furthest thing from her mind; she slept on her couch in her small home in Diamond City with Nate's tape on a constant loop, sending her down another path of misery completely.

_ Everything we do no matter how hard, we do it for our family. _

She was a family of one for too long a time, even before Shaun died. When all this is said and done, and if she survives it, she needs to put Nate to rest. Not move on but bury him the way he should've been buried from the beginning and say goodbye so this loss can begin to settle, like dust over forgotten furniture and trinkets left in the home of someone who's been gone for years but whose family can't quite disturb the peace of what was once theirs. Nate was once hers, as was Shaun.

To this day, Shaun's crib sits in Sanctuary. Untouched aside from some candles she left melted over the floor beside wilted flowers that crinkle in the wind that gusts through their dead petals. 

Everything she says about them feels like a never-ending eulogy.

Her smile falters. "I need to make a stop first, if that's okay."

Deacon reads between the lines immediately and his own smile turns to a thin line, gentle wrinkles visible in the dim candlelight. There aren't many years between them that she knows but the wasteland is a stressful place to live, long-term exposure to the sun of a nuclear summer places signs of aging in the face of people much younger than her, like Piper and Preston. She has her own, from stressful university exams and the years Nate spent in Alaska.  _ Cearig _ , her mother called it. 

Deacon has young eyes. Bright but gentle, and comforting on the rare chance she sees them. She imagines the concerned squint of them as he says, "Sure, if that's what you want. You okay to go there on your own?"

"I need to see him, after Shaun, I…" Yvonne regains control over her faltering voice, gaze falling from Deacon to her shaking hands. Five on her left and five on her right. "I just want to talk to him. I won't take long, I'll catch up with you at Sanctuary after."

They bid Mayor Hancock goodbye and though he refuses the caps Yvonne tries to offer him, he accepts the jet she presses into his hand. She folds his fingers over it in his palm and let's the moment linger for as long as is comfortable with Illusion and Deacon hovering in the doorway, and the ghost of her introversion that wishes she were back home in Diamond City. Alone. No company but Dogmeat curled up on the couch beside her as she plays on her pip-boy and reads comics aloud to him.

She's incredibly out of her depth in relative safety, used to days huddled behind cover in the wasteland before retreating home to rest battered limbs. The restless edge of her movements say as much, here standing unmoved with Hancock included.

"Thank you for helping us, if there's anything I can do -"

"Just look after yourself, sweetheart," Hancock's smile barely curls at his lips, but it reaches his eyes. "And come back here every now and again to put some rumours to rest, would you? Every week someone swears you're dead. Nice of you to pop by and let me know you're not."

She ruffles her newly short hair before situating her hood and gas mask over her face, grateful for the disguise of it once again. There's something too exposing about having her face on show; something forbidden and terrifying, as if she's almost too  _ seen _ regardless of who's around. Shaun saw it more often than not, a privilege not granted to many, yet she'd hidden what was possible of her face when storming the Institute and finding who she once considered her son dying in his room.

With her mouth and nose covered, she can finally breathe easy again.

"I'll try, no promises," Yvonne's hands and legs almost ache with the desire to once again traipse around the wasteland - to wander. "You take care, Mayor."

Hancock jokingly salutes as he closes the door behind her and Deacon huffs a small, amused laugh. "Can't say the guy hasn't got character," he turns towards the staircase. "Shall we?"

They gear up with ammo and purified water before leaving Goodneighbor, the last dregs of sunlight swimming between the cracks of buildings and lighting a path for them. Yvonne takes the lead, her pip-boy shining through the approaching dark with her friends in tow, knowing these will be the last few days of peace she has before they approach Sanctuary and seek out the Institute scientist's seemingly hunting her down. It won't be easy, but nothing about her life has ever been easy, especially in the new world birthed from war.

It's always difficult showing up to greet people she abandoned a month ago with the memory of her son; most of all, guilt at breaking her promise to a trusting, kind Preston Garvey

While she's lost in thought Deacon jogs up to her side, trademark Goodneighbor disguise traded for wasteland gear worthy of the meanest raiders. He keeps his voice low enough to go uncaught by Illusion shuffling behind them: "It'll all work out okay in the end, Wanderer. You'll see."

Of all the lies he's told, this one is her least favourite..


	3. the lies we believe.

Sanctuary, unsurprisingly, looks no different from when Yvonne left it. The gate she spent weeks assembling out the front is standing strong, well lit and defended, and with a familiar face out front that doesn't notice her from this distance. She recognises the outfit, hat and gun included, immediately and it nearly conjures a grateful smile, if only she were visiting under better circumstances than her potential death and the potential death of seven kidnapped synths.

"I'm going," she stops not far after passing the Red Rocket, Deliverer sweaty in her leather gloved grip. "It's up the hill and a bit far that way, but I'll be back before you know it. Tell Preston I say hi and I'll be there to say it in person soon."

"Noted," Deacon's own grip on his pistol relaxes the slightest. After all her work making Sanctuary safe to preserve her dead son's bedroom, it's easily one of the safest places in the Commonwealth. "If you're longer than an hour, I'll come find you."

Illusion offers her his hand, shaking hers gently in his when she cautiously takes it. "Tell your husband I'm a big fan," he smiles, warm. If it were anyone else making the remark she might consider taking offence, but she knows it's genuine coming from him. "And come back safe, alright? We'll let Sturges know what's going on, no need for you to rush. I think we all get it, you know. If I could talk to Jeremy right now, I… I don't think I'd shut up for hours. I'd probably still be talking when I fell asleep."

They part ways with polite goodbyes and she begins the trek to Vault 111, keeping careful footing around Sanctuary to avoid having to get within visual distance of it. Preston will understand why she's here instead of greeting him, and she knows Deacon and Illusion will handle what they need to in her absence; she trusts them more than she trusts herself, almost. 

Pushing the elevator button fills her with a backwards deja vu, unsteady feet finding footing on the elevator as it glides down. She keeps her eyes closed, afraid if she opens them - even for a second - she'll see the world burning before her again, and her future choking on the ash. Last time she stood here, her husband was dead and her baby was gone, and trauma was at the centre of her grief the same way every gust of cool air signals red flashing lights and an automated voice saying something about cryogenics.

It's so easy to be back there, but it's not easy to be back  _ here _ . The vault is claustrophobic as she steps onto the ramp, lights bright and flashing, and her footsteps light as she treads as if scared of waking the dead that suffocated within the walls they were promised were safe.

Dead radroaches lay rotting on floors that have remained the most pristine thing in the Commonwealth, her hands shaking even as she squeezes them into fists. 

Yvonne pauses by a random pod and peers into it, the very repercussions of stepping foot in the vault jolting her with another sharp pinch of grief. All her neighbours are frozen for eternity, perfectly preserved and young as she breathes and ages out in the wasteland; she envies them, so unaware of the world falling apart and of the dangers that plague the shadows. 

They're dead. All of them. 

Her friends. The people who invited her out the lonely nights after Nate enlisted. People she had dinner with when Nate came home. People who came over when Shaun was merely weeks old to bring him toys and clothes, and congratulate the new parents. People who saw the world die the same as she did. People who  _ understood _ .

She reaches Nate's pod, completely undisturbed. His wedding ring is frosted on his finger and his skin is smooth with icy flakes. She always loved the winter, when snowflakes would catch in his hair and his face would blush pink from the bite of the wind. There were days before he left for the cold Alaskan climate on his own where they'd go for walks in the deep snow and she'd cuddle against his side, and those memories of his safe grip on her kept her going in his absence. 

There were many winter nights where it was too cold to sleep and she'd lie on his side of the bed hugging herself until morning. She'd close her eyes and imagine those walks with him, and when he'd take her hands and blow heat into them when she winced at how painfully cold they were without gloves.

Yvonne curls her hand into a fist, resisting the urge telling her to open his pod. He's dead, yet she finds her fingers inching closer to the release, eyes burning as she considers whether it's worth defrosting him just so she can see him without glass parting them. 

"I killed our baby," she murmurs. The fingers reaching out close back into a fist, sorrow hitching her breath. "He was sixty when I found him and he was so cruel, Nathan. It was mercy, in the end. Killing him. I have to keep telling myself it was or, or I might actually realise I destroyed my son's home and life the same way all that was taken from us.  _ You  _ were taken from me."

She closes her eyes, imagining the expression he'd wear if he were alive. "Because, everything we do no matter how hard, we do it for our family." The remains of cryogenic freezing settles marrow deep in her bones and she shivers. "The Institute took the family from us. They just… they killed you. So, I killed them. I keep telling myself you'd understand, if you'd heard Shaun call his own father's murder 'collateral damage.' You'd understand why I had to kill them, honey. They ruined families other than ours and called it the greater good, the only hope for a better future."

The glass separating them is cold against her hands despite her gloves. 

"I love you." 

_ Critical error in cryogenic disarray. _

Ghosts of her from the past linger here, a sole survivor yelling for help, hands bruised from pounding against the glass of her chamber. Her screams of anguish, chasing the silence in the halls and reminding her of months ago, the agony of this vault and every vault after it. Trauma covers her with a warm blanket and grief sinks her to her knees, and she doesn't know if she'll ever be able to get up; she simply wants to sleep and wishes to wake in a world much different from this, where her heart doesn't cry relentlessly every waking moment.

"I keep thinking if I want it bad enough, you'll stop being dead," Yvonne sniffs, desperate to hold back tears. "But it doesn't work like that. If it did, you would've stopped being dead months ago."

Deep, cold breaths. Her exhales come out in visible white puffs, and she's never been so grateful for the layers she's taken to wearing, keeping the worst of the chill from her body. It's still cold, she won't deny that, but she's not as frozen as she was when she first stumbled out of the vault barely defrosted, her new reality barely having settled in. Her throat was raw from screaming and she remembers that most, rasping for help as she stumbled through dirt and bones to what had once been her home.

"I'm going to come back soon," she tells Nate, her legs aching as she stands. "I need to bury you so I'm - I'm going to come back with a friend and do that. I love you, and I miss you. And I'm sorry, about everything."  _ I hope you find peace, mother. " _ Goodbye, Nathan."

Her footsteps echo around the pristine walls, her hands gripping her gun with a fervor unfelt since the first time she walked out of here. Regardless of her memories of the past few months, the nightmarish thought that they were simply a glimpse into a dark future and she's only just awakened from cryogenics grips her with a fear she doesn't know how to explain. It's different from the fear of death or the unique fear that comes from time spent in the wasteland - it's the fear of having to go through it all again, and come out at the end of it with the same trauma only doubled.

She doesn't shield her eyes on the way up the elevator, the skeletons littering the space of Vault 111 stick behind eyelids and she knows if she were to close her eyes, they'd be all she saw. As horrified as she'd been upon first seeing them, she had been too blinded by confusion and fresh grief to fully comprehend the atrocities that had occured while she'd been taking what Deacon kindly referred to as 'the big sleep.'

Yet, that Yvonne seems foolish, naive almost. The way she crawled into the wasteland still hearing the gunshot that killed her husband and without blood on her hands, nothing more than a prewar lawyer and a mother and a widow. She was freshly scorched by the world and its cruelty, but not quite burnt. There was hope in her, a bright little thing that pushed her through the worst of things to the other end. 

She's learning you can be a good person and do bad things, but more often than not she worries she's simply a bad person who is capable of kindness and goodness. There's no way to tell. Morality was not always black and white on paper and in a courtroom but she found a way to fight for the people she knew were good people; she would read the case and know they were good, just  _ know _ .

Sanctuary appears in view, fresh patches of green grass clinging to the sides of paths and buildings, and figures she could recognise from miles away lumber around the house across from her own. 

Preston is most instantly recognisable, alongside Deacon, Sturges, and Illusion. Illusion, who spots her peering at them and waves at her in the distance. He's smiling and the sight quickens her step a fraction of a second faster, hopeful for good news.

"General, ma'am," Preston tips his hat as she approaches. His face doesn't betray emotion. "It's good to see you well. Your friends were just catching me up to speed on the Institute threat and the damage done to nearby settlements. I was hoping to have a word with you while you're here, too, if that's alright."

"Sure," Yvonne says, nervously wetting her lips under the safety of her gas mask. "Should we step inside?"

Preston motions to the door and she gathers her courage for his potential disappointment with her. "After you, General," he doesn't smile, but she steps through and leads him to one of the far bedrooms that sits empty postwar.

Yvonne shifts from foot to foot, trying to catch a stable breath as she tries to settle on the right way to apologise. It's been almost a month since she told him she'd see him soon, moments after pressing the button dooming the future of humanity to a dead world. Preston doesn't speak but he watches her, lips downturned in a frown as she fights off her body's vicious shakes.

"I'm sorry," she tries. At the same time, Preston says, "Are you okay?"

The genuine tone of his voice stuns her, his concern gripping her heart as she stares at him unable to speak. It's been a long time since someone asked how she was doing and she'd forgotten what it was like; but of course it's Preston asking, because she's traveled this wasteland top to bottom what may as well be a thousand times and not yet met anyone as good as he is. There's a decent what is probably seven years between them, an age difference too similar to the one between her and her brother for her to consider Preston as anything other than a friend and brother-type figure.

She wants to tell him she's grateful he made it back to Sanctuary safe but the words won't come. Instead, her body locks up. Only minutes ago she was traversing through the subject of many night terrors and before that, she was living everyday unable to rid herself of the image of the man her son grew up to be in his room dying.

"Am I okay?" she repeats.

Preston's features soften, as does his voice when he restates his genuine, "Are you okay, General?"

Yvonne exhales, trying to blink away the urgent need to cry. Unshed tears swim in her eyes and blur her view. She counts her fingers three times over to ground herself in the moment and to snap out of her resurfaced grief. "I'm trying to be," she admits. "I'd… I'd feel better without rogue Institute scientist's threatening our settlements."

"Business as always with you, huh, Wanderer," Deacon chimes in behind her. When she turns to look at him, surprised, he's leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest. He's smiling. "Are you really thinking of retiring after this?" He raises an eyebrow. "It's like I've said, Desdemona wouldn't refuse your help, and I'm sure your army misfits wouldn't either."

Yvonne clears the tears bubbling in her throat and manages to meet his gaze, which isn't an easy feat considering his penchant for those damned dark sunglasses. "I  _ was  _ retired, before you sent one of your agents to drag me out of my comfy bed to chase shadows around the Commonwealth, crossing fingers we'd find missing people at the end of it." She pauses to catch her breath. "I am retired, Deacon. Me being here doesn't change anything."

"Don't flatter yourself," Deacon's blank stare doesn't falter. "You need us, same as we need you. Speaking of which, Sturges almost has the signal, we're ready when you are."

Not far away, a loud crackle punches through the air.

Her right hand instinctively itches towards Deliverer out of habit, her whole body on edge enough that she steps back further against the wall at her back. She doesn't quite reach it but it's there, a comforting presence leaving her with views of every exit and the gentle, concerned way Preston regards her. She had a dog once as a kid that would bite when it was scared; she wonders if she's picked up that habit, fingers brushing the surface of her gun until the frantic thudding of her heart relaxes.

When Nate came home from fighting in Alaska, he would tense up at the slightest of sounds. Sometimes he'd hear the neighbourhood children playing and his breath would stop dead, and she'd later realise that trauma is a dark beast and there would be moments Nate's memories of the war would allow the beast of trauma to devour him. He would tell her, with his head resting on her stomach as she carded her fingers through his overgrown hair, that he would have these recurring nightmares while serving.

Some of the boys he served with were barely adults and at home in America wouldn't have been able to buy beer on their own. Others, like the older men and women, would tell horror stories of war in other parts of the world and of children, used and discarded as products of a war that favoured no one.

Still, he had wanted kids. Once, he'd joked about their big family and how they'd have to get a place with more rooms for their future sports team. She remembers laughing and playfully shoving at him, and the way he'd take her in his arms and kiss her and the icy grip of worry would melt away. He could soothe anything by just touching her, even by simply taking her hand when he knew there was something vicious clawing at her mind that would relentlessly press at her until Nate would banish it.

Yvonne would do the same, when nightmares woke him in the night. He'd reach for a gun he slept with in Alaska and instead find his wife, half asleep and eyes wide with worry as she grabbed him to keep him from falling out of bed. He'd fall back to sleep with his face buried in her neck and his arms tight around her, but she'd lie awake the rest of the night making sure he slept soundly and without incident. Some nights, she has dreams so horrible she wakes up on the floor, a tired Dogmeat curled up with her and careful of the way her body throws itself about, trying to wake up.

War never changes. 

She gathers the mess of her bleeding heart and nods at Deacon. "Okay."

After this, she'll have more things added to a growing list of nightmare material. Nate's death sits forever at the top of it, Kellogg's voice tormenting her even in sleep, every night. Then Shaun and the rooftop of CIT, the same recurring nightmare every few days when guilt wraps its embrace around her and reminds her of the betrayal of destroying the Institute only days after her son told her he hoped she found a way to someday live with this. She killed him three days after that and his kind voice finds her in sleep.

_ I hope you find peace. _

Yvonne shakes her hands, pulling them away from her pistol. Deacon's posture shifts immediately.

"Wanderer! Deacon!" Illusion's voice cuts the tension in the room and ends Yvonne and Deacon's unending staring contest, his boyish face peering into the room. "Sturges got the signal and, well, you've got to come help. We're not sure how long he'll be able to hold it so you might wanna hurry. Oh, and Preston, hey! You too, man."

He disappears, footsteps heavy.

"General," Preston, waiting for her to leave the room first. 

She reluctantly stalks after Deacon and Illusion, trying to catch breaths that continue to dart just out of reach, taunting her as she near hyperventilates. Her first time in court she spent minutes beforehand smoothing down her dress and trying not to pass out, and back then that had been the hardest thing she'd done beside saying goodbye to Nate and sleeping, and living, alone while he was gone. She's been sleeping alone for months now and it strikes that familiar part of silent misery it did then.

But the difference is, unlike that time in court, this means something. It's the  _ Institute _ and they kidnapped seven synths, including Curie and Jeremy. Their voices could come over the radio saying they were going to kill the synths they took and Yvonne would be helpless to do anything. There'd be only listening and sitting still. 

Her feet carry her of entirely their own accord, right on Deacon's heels.

Sturges barely glances at them as they walk up to him, nerves high. "Hey, was wondering when you'd show," he wipes oil from his hand on his jeans. "I managed to get part of the signal but it should be enough, that is, if you're willing to put a few things together for me. Could use your pip-boy, for starters." He finally looks over. "This is a kind of satellite dish, capable of reaching right near Diamond City, but you'll need to tune your fancy wrist radio to the station if you wanna listen. I tried a regular radio but the signal wouldn't catch."

Yvonne lifts her arm to examine her pip-boy, hand poised over the dial. "How will I know when I've got it?"

"It shouldn't be hard to find," Sturges begins. "Their device wasn't encrypted and I have a suspicion they're using the old classical radio frequency to communicate. If you ask me, for a group of educated scientists, they don't make these things as complicated as they outta."

Illusion leans against Sturges' workbench, a rusty screwdriver secure in his curious hands. He's lost in his own thoughts for a moment - Yvonne wonders if it's about Jeremy - before he safely settles the screwdriver back down and pays attention to the conversation, eyes dim with loss. "You think it's an accident?"

Deacon sighs, massaging his temple with one hand. His sunglasses don't falter. "Unless they want to be found."

"Could be that, also," Sturges shrugs. "Something tells me it's a little bit of both."

Yvonne catches the signal, inaudible voices crackling through the speaker. Reminiscent of pre-war days standing on her couch to get the internet she lifts her pip-boy above her head until the voices clear the slightest, but it hardly makes a difference. Her ears strain to make out the sentences being said before she gives up, bringing her pip-boy to her face to examine it. Their voices still oddly muffled through the radio, she switches to the only station that reaches the whole Commonwealth and back, nerves racking her whole body.

"Sturges, can you clear it up somehow?" Yvonne says, barely looking away from her wrist. As hard as she tries, the signal doesn't improve any. "I can't get the station clear and I can barely hear anything. Some voices and static, that's about it."

"Could we raise the satellite?" Illusion asks Sturges. "You said it was capable of reaching near Diamond City but the classical radio station came from CIT. Surely it'd be coming from there again?"

Deacon pushes himself off the wall and to Yvonne's side, leaving Sturges and Illusion to discuss things between themselves. They collaborate in the background while Yvonne feigns interest in her currently useless pip-boy, because Deacon is pressed close to the space beside her and the thought of rehashing their previous conversations stirs something inside her. Worst is, she knows deep down that she's enjoying this despite her bed in Diamond City mournfully calling her name.

"It's getting worse," Deacon murmurs.

Yvonne drops her wrist, turning her head to examine him. She switches her weight to her right foot and leans in conspiratorially, expecting it's about Illusion. "What's getting worse?"

"You," a flippant response. Deacon doesn't so much as glance at her. "Starting to see the old you, you know. The vault dweller who fought her way to the Railroad alone and then dragged me around the wasteland trying to find her son. After we last saw you at HQ and everyone heard you were dead, I didn't think I'd see it again and neither did Tom. Des almost crossed your name off the board a dozen times before agents started reporting a surplus of escaped Institute synths, claiming the Minutemen had spared them.  _ Your _ Minutemen.

"I don't think anyone's thanked you for that, Wanderer. I was going to leave that to Des but I'm trying to thank you now, as a friend and coworker and ruggedly handsome accomplice. I know you lost your son and your husband is still gone, but you saved us. All those synths can have new lives, safe from the shadow of the Institute. All of  _ us _ can have new lives, too."

A cool breeze tears through Yvonne's armour and she shivers, ignoring the tears blurring her vision. "I didn't do it for them, or the Commonwealth," she admits, chewing the inside of her cheek. "I needed something that would make it easier for me to be forgiven; after everything I've done, I was having a hard time finding things to make me redeemable. I evacuated the Institute for that, and made sure as many synths got out as possible. Selfishly, I wanted them to find the Railroad and redeem me in Des' eyes, and yours."

"You freed them, it doesn't matter why you did it."

"I did it because I killed my son," Yvonne argues, chest heaving with a deep inhale. "I thought if I could save other people it would make that simple fact better, and then it didn't. I freed them so other people could forgive me, while realising that I could only forgive myself if I didn't do all of it in the first place." Nate's dog tags are heavy in her pocket and she reaches a gloved hand in to tangle her fingers in the chain. "What's done is done, it doesn't matter. But, thank you. Not for thanking me but for trying to. I… I appreciate it, really."

Deacon rests his hand on her shoulder for a brief, comforting moment. It's warm and gone entirely too soon, but she cherishes it for the small moment it lasts. Even though they'll never quite have what they used to, she's glad they're friends again after the last few months. He's a good man to have in your corner.

Footsteps draw close and Yvonne looks across at her old home, sun painting it gold.

The footsteps pause beside her and Illusion fills the space on her other side, whistling at the sunset that's painted in the sky. "Were they like this back in your time, Wanderer? It's so beautiful, I can't imagine it in a world that's alive."

"Yeah," she confirms, a shy smile brightening her face. "Nate and I used to walk up the hill and watch them in the spring and autumn, when the grass and trees looked their best. He preferred the pink sunsets and I preferred the orange, but they're all nice to look at. I actually can't remember the last time I paid attention to one."

"Hard to forget things this nice can exist out here," Deacon says, admiring the view.

Illusion agrees then deflates with a loud sigh. "Jeremy would love this. He usually likes the sunrises at Bunker Hill but if I see him again, remind me to tell him how nice sunsets are in Sanctuary."

The silence embraces them and Yvonne closes her eyes against the last embers of the sun before it descends against the horizon. It isn't warm through her gas mask or skin mostly hidden by cloth, leather and steel, but the action brings some sense of relief that she hasn't experienced for longer than she can remember. She ignores Illusion's  _ if, _ leaning into him for a moment as a gesture of solidarity that she hopes he understands. He's a solid figure to lean against for the half a minute she presses against his side before he laughs and playfully shoves her off.

"Okay, yeah, yeah," he's fighting a winning grin. "I know, I'm an idiot.  _ When  _ I see him, I'll tell him, okay? God. Can't even indulge in some hopelessness around here. You're enough to make a guy miserable, Wanderer."

"I try," she quips, careful to meet his gaze to make sure he's okay. He nods and relief immediately pools within her, reminding her of how much this'll hurt when their mission is over and he goes back to his farm, and she returns to Diamond City to kick up her feet and grieve every loss tenfold. It's a hard thought that solidifies a permanent place amongst the roster of things that slip into every nightmare regardless.

She'll miss him. He's practically a kid to her at almost thirty, but he carries a spirit that so closely resembles her brother's, Gregory, that she imagines losing him would be akin to losing Gregory all over again. She hurts. And despite the fact that she doesn't stop hurting these days, this is a fresh wound that's hard to ignore.

Deacon's elbow gently nudges into her ribs, ruining the peace. "Robot butler incoming."

"Uh, mum," Codsworth says, rounding the corner. He sounds confused and unsure, almost. "We have guests. Shall I prepare tea?" 

She knows Codsworth was programmed like this but she finds herself staring at him for so long it surpasses normal. .

"Guests," Illusion repeats, while everyone stands stunned. "We have guests?"

Preston approaches in the distance, people none of them can make out from this distance trailing behind him. Four of them, including a woman whose face becomes clearer upon approach and whose confirmation of life pulls some, but not all, of Yvonne's worry from her heart. She hasn't seen Curie in far too long and she fights off the urge to greet her as the Institute uniforms worn by two of the four become visible, unrecognisable faces mixed with the ever recognisable face of Curie.

Illusion goes to step forward and Yvonne stops him, curling her fingers into his sleeve to hold him in place. His quizzical expression doesn't go unnoticed but she clings to him, her heart pounding dangerously in her chest as voices carry up towards them.

"Jin!" a man calls. 

Illusion stills, wide eyes tracking the man's every movement. Yvonne's grip falls from him of its own accord before he steps forward, voice barely above a whisper when he falls another few steps, legs unstable beneath him.

"Jeremy," he breathes. "Jeremy, you're…"

The man that Yvonne now knows is Jeremy quickens his steps towards Illusion, wide grin splitting his lips. He has ashen blond hair so dark it nears brown and dirt smudged on his face, and though he isn't what she was expecting, part of Yvonne knows that it simply makes sense. His face visible over Illusion's shoulder as they hug simply belongs there, and she finds herself clenching her left hand just for the sensation of her wedding ring pressing into its neighbouring fingers.

Deacon watches, too, silent. She knows he's thinking about Barbara the same way she's thinking about Nate; as happy as she is for Illusion, the horror of her dead husband on ice not far from here as Illusion reunites with Jeremy surges jealousy into her that she didn't know she had.

"Mademoiselle, Yvonne," Curie calls, waving her hand with a welcoming smile.

Yvonne waves back wordlessly, eyes now freshly peering at the two Institute scientist's barely metres from her. They stop with Preston and she waits, still, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"We've been hoping to meet you," one of them says. The older woman on his left sighs, offering her hand as a more formal greeting.

Yvonne reluctantly takes it, pressing her gloved hand into their own, overly clean one. "I hear you've been giving some of my settlements some trouble. Mind if we talk about that while you're here?"

"Excuse my partner," Deacon says, all charm. His hands clamp down on Yvonne's shoulders. "She's all work, no play this one. Can we get you a drink for your trouble on the road?"

Yvonne's eyes dart away from her to Illusion, his hands enthusiastically moving about as he talks to Jeremy, who watches him with the warmth of a man completely in love. Jeremy's gaze flickers to hers and she stares back, blinking away tears that inevitably burn away at her and purges her newfound desire for normalcy from wherever it resided. 

Kasumi Nakano, missing, sits at the back of her mind. She has a knack for this missing people thing, or Nick seemed to think so, at least. She'll go find her when this is over, and give peace to Kasumi's parents, so desperate and wrought over the disappearance of their only daughter; Yvonne can see herself in the role of a parent grieving a loss they don't know will occur and it dimmers the joy that blinds the creeping shadows of the past that haunt Sanctuary. It isn't by much, yet it's claws dig into Yvonne.

She'll give them the peace Shaun wanted for her that she hasn't found. If he still wants it for her, after everything she did.

"Wanderer," Deacon says. Once then again. And again.

She stumbles over her words when the oldest Institute scientist thanks her for giving them time to evacuate, and tears turn her breath to nothing as she replies, "It was all Preston. If he hadn't been there to remind me, I would've forgotten."

Deacon leads her inside to a table and chairs and the minutes pass by in a blur or confusion. She falls prey to her overbearing grief, managing a few words here and there as her son's friends praise her for what she did to him and his home in the Institute. They mourn the technology left instead of their faithful leader, and thank the woman who blew it up instead of scolding her for turning to genocide to solve a problem that likely could've been solved without it. The Nuka Cola and noodle cup Illusion gave her hours ago on the road twist in her stomach.

"Of all people, you should understand the desperate need for food when first stepping foot in the wasteland," the older scientist, Delia, says to Yvonne. "Callum and I separated to minimise our chances of getting caught, though we quickly found that without help from our more technical friends, we weren't able to strengthen the connection far enough to communicate over far distances. Sanctuary was our end goal, after we heard we could find Father's mother here. It wasn't an easy task but we made it without incident."

"What about Curie?" Yvonne finds her voice. "And Jeremy. We believed they were kidnapped, along with five others."

"Uh, I can explain that," the younger scientist, Callum, says. "We stopped by this place called Goodneighbor and ran into five Gen 3's. They were going for memory wipes, unwillingly, and asked us to take them with us. Obviously, we'd assumed they would tell their friends or family, though the look on your face tells me they didn't. And, Curie, we - we picked her up on the road. She's a scientist, too, and was very curious about our work so we let her come along."

"We're very sorry about the trouble we've caused," Delia soothes, placing a kind hand over Yvonne's. It stays there until Yvonne burns a hole through it with her eyes, then Delia pulls it away. "When the Institute died, we ended up near that settlement with the large tower. Bunker Hill, I think. We ran into Jeremy, who was in trouble, and he was injured so we took him with us. He spent most of his time asleep, even with antibiotics and water we managed to steal from farms along our path, and we tried to get word back to his husband but it mustn't have reached him."

"Do you have any other questions?" Callum asks.

Deacon crosses his arms over his chest at Yvonne's side, where he seems to permanently reside these last few days. "The other synths," he starts. "Where are they?"

"We didn't want to risk coming in here and having the people here be hostile so we left them up the room in an abandoned museum," Delia answers swiftly. As genuine as her smile appears, Yvonne finds she doesn't trust it. "We understand they were working with Railroad, who we're very interested in meeting, and respect the work of the Railroad, it's just… Well, these synths want to keep their memories, no matter the risk. They felt their hand was forced to erase who they are and they don't want to lose that."

Yvonne's memory trinkles to H2-22, his holotape kept in her bedside table along with her other treasured possessions. They hadn't spent much time together apart from their time with High-Rise, and in spite of that, she found herself often wondering where he ended up after his time with Amari. Days after she went down the stairs to Amari's room after having been warned against it and found H2-22, face the same but memory altered to not include her, she hadn't been able to place the way that small loss bundled itself in her heart.

Now, sitting here, she continues to not be able to place it. He hadn't been a friend or an acquaintance, but a product of the Institute and then one of their many victims. _ That _ is familiar. Sometimes it's hard to remember it was the Institute, the big bad monster, that stormed Vault 111 and took Nate from her then Shaun. She's a victim. All the bad she's done and she was the victim first.

Deacon remains silent, obviously spinning words in his head to narrate this as lively as possible to a less than interested Des.

"How's the child synth?" Delia leans forward and takes the cup of water Preston gave her. She sips it with a smile as silence descends upon the room. "The scientists that worked on him were unbelievably pleased with how he turned out. Those of us who remembered Shaun as a child could confirm its likeness to the original, and we were all fond of him. Is he here?"

"He's safe elsewhere," Yvonne gathers whatever shreds of her confidence remain and straightens up in her seat. 

"Do you like him?" Callum asks, with the tone of a child whose made something for a parent and in the next room, his mother's favourite dress is missing a square of fabric. "Everyone worked especially hard on him, and we're very thankful you rescued him from the Institute. Have you spent much time with him?"

"No." Short and simple. Yvonne fights to not shrink under their gazes, aware of the disappointment and confusion clouding their faces. As far as she knows, Sturges sent him to be safe at the Castle, cared for by the settlers and Ronnie Shaw. It's unnerving and irresponsible, perhaps, to know an impressionable boy of about ten years old is without a proper parent, abandoned to the Minutemen base of operations because the woman he's programmed to see as his mother can't bear to look at him. 

Delia and Callum exchange whispers before turning back to give Yvonne their full attention. It's Delia who speaks, predictably.

"We understand it must be hard, having not known the real Shaun when he was a child," her voice is forcefully soft. "I want you to know the synth version is as realistic as possible and though it isn't a suitable replacement, Father wanted you to have a son."

"I  _ had _ a son," Yvonne growls. "Your people made a known killer take him and kill my husband. If you came here looking for forgiveness, I have none. I did my part evacuating the Institute and that's the most I was willing to do." Illusion steps through the doorway, Jeremy on his heels, and Yvonne avoids so much as glancing his way. "I'll tell you what I told Shaun after I freed the synths at Bunker Hill: you should've left me on ice. I was nothing more than an experiment to him and he told me as much, and no amount of trying to make up for it because he was  _ dying  _ makes that any easier to live with."

Callum leans forward, lips pursed. "Father was trying to make up for lost time. He was hoping the synth Shaun would help heal whatever emotional wounds had opened after finding out the truth about your family, and I know if he were here, he'd…" 

"He'd remind me how disappointed he is that he waited sixty years to meet me and I was  _ this _ ," Yvonne steadies her anger, reminded of days in court trying to keep a solid head as her case fell apart before her. But, this is an argument she doesn't care if she wins or loses; she's just so tired that she wants it to be over. "He didn't give me synth Shaun because he loved me or he wanted things to be different, he did it to hurt me. He knew I'd look at it and see my husband, and he knew it would kill me."

"You didn't know Father the way we did."

Five fingers on her left hand, five fingers on her right. She curls her hands back into solid fists. "And whose fault is that?"

"Just promise to give him a chance," Delia mediates, a piece of gray hair falls from her bun and across her temple. "The child Shaun is as intelligent and inquisitive as the first, and right now I imagine he's figured out his mother has abandoned him with people he sees as practically strangers, even if they aren't to you. He's a good kid and he deserves a good family."

"I can't give him that," Yvonne's legs ache as she stands, desperate to escape like a cornered animal. Her body violently shivers despite the warmth of late afternoon, the last rays of sun fizzling through the broken windows of the house. "I don't know why you wanted to meet me or why you went to all this trouble, but it wasn't worth it. Thank you for bringing Curie and Jeremy back. That's - that's all I can thank you for. So, thank you. I hope our paths don't cross again, for both our sakes."

Illusion and Jeremy move aside as she heads for the door, Deacon's eyes on her back following her well out of the house. 

"That's it?" 

She turns, expecting a fight with Deacon. Instead Illusion, eyes wounded and shoulders deflated. 

"You got Jeremy back, what do you mean 'that's it'?" Yvonne scoffs. A few paces behind Illusion, a silent Deacon leans against the outer wall of what was once Rosa's house. "I'm retired, Jin. This was a temporary mission, which is done, and now I'm going back home to try and once again put this behind me."

"You're not even going to say goodbye?"

She stammers. "I did."

"Not to me," Illusion says. "And now you're lashing out because you're hurt, and this isn't my fault. But this is what you do, right? Go around the Commonwealth making friends then leaving them because they've served their purpose and you don't need them anymore." He pauses and she holds her ground, each word cutting deeper. "You think maybe you should give Shaun a shot, considering he's what you wanted? You wanted your son and your kid, then he's there and you're going to leave him somewhere alone because  _ you  _ can't handle it? All those friends you've lost, and you never learnt your lesson?"

Yvonne closes her eyes behind her gas mask and sees Shaun atop the ruins of CIT, the soft strain of his voice when he said, "I hope you find peace." She doesn't know what peace means in the wasteland, so far removed from the world it once was two hundred years before and so turbulent it never offers the chance to relax. There is no peace here; there isn't peace anywhere.

"Goodbye, Jin," she manages, ignoring the salt of the tears spilling from her eyes. "I'm glad you found Jeremy. If you need me, you know where to find me. Aside from that, I… I'm glad this is finally over so I can go home."

"You don't know where to find me." 

Yvonne clears her throat to speak, "Outside Bunker Hill, at a farm somewhere. If I need you, I'll find you."

Saying goodbye is easy until it finally arrives, then it's forced conversation and lingering around not wanting to leave. Once she turns and puts her back to them, it's over. There'll be no looking over her shoulder or deciding here and now that she wants to stay; her bed in Diamond City is calling her name, offering her the life she has carved for herself out of the Commonwealth and begging her to wash her hands and rid them of the last few days. She'll miss Deacon and Preston, again, the same way she'll miss Curie and Illusion.

"Can you make the trip alone? Jeremy and I are heading that way, anyway, if you want us to come with you," Illusion's words are rushed, a step forward pushing her to take a further step back. "Not that you aren't capable of making it on your own, because I know you are, but someone watching your back out here is always a good thing. You never know what's out there."

Yvonne's aware of Deacon spying on them, inconspicuous sunglasses on his face and ever-changing get up now jeans and a red flannel shirt. She'll miss him when she goes. Yet, she finds herself itching to grab Deliverer from her hip and throw herself into the first sign of danger to avoid the grip that her fear of contentment has on her; she's afraid that the moment she lets her guard down and needs someone, her whole life will come crashing down. Afraid, for her dead son and dead husband, and the people they would've become out here.

She saw the person Shaun became underground and she can't forget it. 

She's seen the person she's become in the wasteland and she can't forget that, either.

"I'm not going straight to Diamond City, but I appreciate the offer," Yvonne offers her hand and Illusion takes it, squeezing it carefully. "If you visit HQ, let Tinker Tom know this sniper rifle here has served me well, would you? And his modifications for Deliverer, as well. I wouldn't be alive without either of them and I owe him a billion favours next time I see him."

"Of course, I will," Illusion releases her hand and she jokingly salutes him. His smile is blinding.

"If you ever stop by Diamond City let me know, we'll get a drink or something," she adds, eyes caught on an approaching Deacon. "And bring Jeremy, too."

Illusion looks over at Deacon and sees that as his time to leave, saying goodbye to Yvonne one last time before he steps away back to his husband. She and Deacon watch them for a moment before he eventually speaks, the moon beginning to steadily climb its way up the sky, tiptoeing past bright stars.

"You didn't die, after all." 

She can hear the smile she can't quite see, nudging against his side while a breathy laugh escapes her throat. 

"At least, not this time," he continues, as Yvonne rolls her eyes "But who knows what dangers lie ahead, Wanderer? The future is entirely unpredictable; you might not make it to Diamond City. Some yao guai will feast on your flesh and a scavver will take your sniper rifle, and everyone would be devastated, I'm sure. Maybe Des would finally cross your name off the board back at HQ, make room for some other poor schmuck to try his hand at this secret agent business. Fortunately for him, there'd  _ probably  _ be no Institute scientist's or synth children, but who knows. I certainly don't."

"I'm sorry I abandoned the Railroad," the words are choked. It's been sitting at the back of her mind for a month and yet saying it aloud doesn't do her guilt justice. "I chose the Minutemen over all of you, then argued with Shaun and got kicked out of the Institute, anyway."

Deacon's eyebrows furrow. "You got kicked out?"

"Shaun told me he had just wanted to see how a prewar lawyer would thrive in this world, and as grateful as he said he was that I had found him, I couldn't forgive it. I was so angry," Yvonne admits. Finally saying it aloud takes a weight off her shoulders that she didn't know she was carrying. "I have dreams about it almost every night when I don't have dreams about the Institute murdering my husband, and I can't forget it.

"Nate and I, we tried so hard to start a family. He spent years at war in Alaska and I was so stressed with work and study all the time… when I was finally holding our baby, I couldn't believe we'd actually done it. I would lie awake all night thinking about the person he'd grow up to be and hoping he wouldn't be scarred by the war like his father. As a parent, I feared a thousand different scenarios about the future, but somehow never considered this. I never considered that I'd kill him. And now, I have a synth son I abandoned far away because he won't have a future, and he won't grow up to be anything, and I don't know how to explain that to him.

"I'm scared he'll ask me about Nate and I'll break," she sniffs, breath shuddering. " _ My  _ Nate, who told me that no matter how hard, we do for our family. Sometimes I worry that if he could see the woman I am now, he'd wonder how he possibly could've wanted a family with me. What kind of mother does that to her own child, Deacon? What kind of mother does that make me?"

"You loved him," Deacon says, unbearably soft. "As far as I'm concerned, the mother you were before the bombs is the only mother that counts.  _ She  _ loved him, Wanderer. That's all that matters, that's the mother you are. The mother who loves her son so much she spends months in an unfamiliar shadow of her world fighting her way to him. Because she loved him. That's all."

"Yvonne," she inhales, meeting Deacon's eye. "My name. It's Yvonne."

"You were a good mother, Yvonne."

Her heart, with its never-ending ache, beats, healing gently with each beat. She takes Deacon's hand and smiles, knowing he can't see the watery expression she's wearing. 

"What's your plan now?" Deacon asks, rubbing the back of her hand with his thumb. "Any big explosions I'll need to explain to Des?"

"Maybe. There's a girl missing in Far Harbor, her parents asked Nick Valentine to find her. I might lend a hand, if you don't mind watching Shaun for a few weeks. I'll drop him by myself if Des is okay with it."

Deacon feighs disinterest, but Yvonne easily listens for the humour that she spent weeks becoming accustomed to. "A kid around HQ? What could possibly go wrong?" Then, genuine: "I'll look out for your kid, don't worry. Besides, I can't wait to see the look on Carrington's face when he realises he's on babysitting duty."

"Thank you." She squeezes his hand and he squeezes hers back.

Yvonne wraps up her goodbye and sets off on the road, a new warmth enveloping her as she trudges through freezing dirt, shivering in the unusual winter chill of a nuclear summer. Miles away in a vault, some distance underground, a man takes his first breath in months. 

He wakes up with one name on his lips.

"Shaun!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u for reading if you made it this far!! ♡.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading, kudos and comments very appreciated ♡.


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